burning interstate--
a fast car speeding through
the curved air

Indian Communication

an orange envelope,
twelve roses and a heron°
air mailed from Dhanbad



°in reality a crane

Walking down the tree-lined street to the unemployment office in Hammonton, I think about what I will do when the checks run out.

sun bright sidewalk
a dead opossum’s litter on its nipples

the empty office
glazed with sunlight
incubating paper

quavering heat
cicadas cry
in tempo

Hot tarmac
and diesel fumes.
Strawberries in pots.

bees have returned
to the ixoras -
a June morning

rising
in a nimbus of midges
river baptism

morning toilette
cat slowly flicks his tail
on the windowsill


morning walk
first peppers on the vine


morning drive
gazanias rising from
jet black mulch

walking around the town

there are places where tourists are guided and other places they have to find for themselves, assuming they have the time and inclination to explore our great cities


in the underground train station

the open case

the same old song


in the main shopping street

the paper coffee cups

and the gold and copper coins


two drunks slur and shout

over somethin' and nothin'

found in the litter bin

these days I can’t read

without something crawling

across my page

my mother’s pansies

unwilling to forgive

days without water

.
morning heat
last night's thunder
an unkept promise
.

out from the mist
a swan
forming

a single swift
making a circus
of the morning

KHUS

Smells the happiness
of earth in the khus she wears:
the summer's first rain

The sky, hidden
from view as the land boils.
Barometer rises.

graduation day
his friends keep asking
for my missing son

Pale Pleasures

Like cave-dwellers we
pale, blinking emerge
learn again to greet

scent of roses
late in the evening
nostalgia
for a garden
I've never visited

cumulus
crossing the blue pools
of her gaze

Overhead, clouds boil
in Prussian blue; below,
raspberries ripen.