Who Knew?

So he’s gone and the world is suddenly standing still
The day seems so unending, his empty chair like a paper cut
Small and inconsequential compared to the pain generated
How has it come to this? That life seems to lose its will
When I look back and count the cost, who knew?

And though he’s not unreachable– just a different country
A hemisphere and seasons away – I stare at his photograph
When he took the picture he said we had crying eyes
And through the smiles I can see the camera never lies.

The first day of his journey and he’s out of reach
Walking around a distant airport; I can feel his isolation
No way of telling him we care and to have courage
Soon he will be in his homeland and the frenetic capital
He is still a country boy unversed in Delhi’s ways
Its 3 pm still more than twelve hours till he lands
But here across the world there is nothing I can do
His fate and journey are now out of my hands
But the sense of emptiness and loss – who knew?

I’ll go to bed tonight and try and sleep time away
At 3.30 in the morning, I’ll awake, have some milk
It is 7 am in Delhi and he is landing at the start of day
How kind my friends and colleagues have been
Everyone has reached out and said they care
The end of the first day has just an hour to go
Its grey and overcast, it feels like rain, it feels like snow
The day is losing to the crying eyes and voice
Awash with sadness the rain drives splinters in my heart

Let’s wait another day, I’ll try and see it through
How difficult this was going to be – who knew?
At home the two of us walk around trying not to see
The empty room, the padlocked door, birds unfed
The whole house waits to hear him walk through the door
The dogs run at each sound and then lower their heads
“He's not coming, girls, quieten down,” go back to bed
Try again to sleep, the cold wet winter morning creeps
Slowly nearer, the clock counts the heartbeats till dawn.

The phone rings with Rinpoche's laugh – welcome sound
I rush to get it, still clumsy with sudden sleep
I've missed the call, a lifetime away he stands alone
Five a.m. and I wait for the message to come through
How sad and bereft of company – who knew?
His voice is clear – that treasured fast and worried tone
Always the anxiety – are we OK? How is the day?
Then lunchtime a further call my voice echoing 4,600 miles
But in spite of the distance, we both have tenuous smiles

He has three more days of journey before he sees
The family of his blood and witnesses their delight
Out of reach of the telephone we must spend the night
How hard it would be to let go and open my hand
Let him go, so suddenly returned to his own land
How difficult to stand back, let Karma play its part,
Feet in the present, I must open my heart
Send love and blessings to those who will soon rejoice
Who knew I'd be standing here and have to make this choice?

Surya Streaks Across the Azure Sky

Surya sailing in an azure sky,

Indra’s net a glistening canopy,

Saraswati rides under Indra’s bow

Seven colours swathe the goddess

In their heavenly glow

The ancient river gone from view

Her course now mapped by satellite

Proving that the ancient lore was true

Born of the Himalaya, the abode of snow

She sacrificed herself to the Yamuna’s might

Lord of the Sun stalks in Tiger’s form

Soft footfalls pad past the innocent

In his amber eyes frozen for all Time

That which is caught in his gaze

Light and shade formed by Surya’s rays

Strength and stripes a golden glow

Indra now in giant cat’s disguise

Transforms the landscape

Before our very eyes

The world each day in his power lies

Ravi calls at dawn to Mother Ganga

City of light his eternal treasure

Indra’s bow shoots the golden orb

Across the awestruck indigo sky

Holiest of cities Varanasi sees his flight

Protector and life giver is Surya

As he drowns each night in the Ganges

Do Tigers walk on water, do they ever lie

Their penetrating gaze distilled sunlight

Legend frozen now forever in Indra’s eye

Thus it is that Mother India’s image

Make a collage of the patterned Earth

Jewels garnered from the net of Indra

A pantheon more diverse one cannot envisage

Surya gives each riches of unimagined worth

Few I know can hold the river, quickly stem her flow

Had Saraswati been caught in the Tiger’s eye

Her pure waters would have seemed to crystalize

And the goddess more solid than the rainbow

Surya would have gifted this to those of us on Gaia.

The Tiger on the Hill

In Darjeeling's beautiful foothills up on Tiger Hill

An ancient gate guarding the four directions stands there still

Protecting the Spirit of the Tiger under Kanchenjunga's gaze

In this land where once the Tiger and the Snow Leopard

Clashed in combat over dominion of the Land of Snows

Hidden beyond the icy majesty of the Himalaya.

But, deep within the country's denizens the Tiger

Still holds sway, capturing the heart and soul

Of those brave enough to walk his solitary path.

Look in their eyes and the glint of the Cat

Stares back at you, harsh, imperious, regal.

The soft footfalls walk on the edge of your heart

And your soul rests uneasy as though the whisper

Of some primeval, alluring sound is calling,

Enjoining you to follow, abandon all caution

And conviction, light-headed in the Tiger's wake

Silently the Tiger takes his due, homage exacted

At your cost, and claims his freedom once again

Then leaves as the dusk and the fallen leaves

Cover his presence – what dream was this

The failing light brought to my eyes?

But soft upon my heart the Tiger's footprints burned

And in my soul the first chill wind of the past

Begins to blow – the Cat passed through here

Borne on the Winter Wind in search of Summer's delight.

The Dream Of Might Have Been

Did they say a heart could break for “should have been”?

I don’t recall that they warned that dreams could impale and kill.

The slow massacre of hope nurtured in the invisible unseen

How merciless is the force with which Karma can apply it’s will.

Relics of my smiles lie strewn on the stony ground

Happiness and innocence qualities that Truth saw fit to impound

Dream the dream of might have been

Sing the song of hope long gone;

What is it about reality that cuts so close to the heart?

And if you’ve never really met, can you ever really part?

The stories that we tell ourselves fiction of the first degree

Weave the cobwebs of daydream and imagination entwined

In our minds we capture the hearts of those we do not see

Suddenly Reality’s sharp claws reach out to render us blind

Easy conversation and joyfully imagined camaraderie

Crack and shatter leaving dark emptiness behind

Dream the dream of might have been

Sing the song of hope long gone;

Waves of common sense batter the dreamer’s door

The ghosts of might have been lie broken on the floor.

Set the scene for happiness of every imagined kind

With drops of blood sacrificed from every pore

Bid farewell to the joyful shadows in the mind

Beyond the knife-edged hope you can return no more

Caught in the amber of most treasured memory

Each remembered word slowly loses veracity

Dream the dream of might have been

Sing the song of hope long gone;

The knight of Reality cuts a swathe through dreams

Sacrificing my fairy tales; fractured spoils of war.

This is what there is and there was never more

So easy to say and to believe that you are sure

Come the day that reality claims its prize

Now I see the world with someone else’s eyes

So once again life has proved me wrong

What’s for me a dirge is now some else’s song

Dream the dream of might have been

Sing the song of hope long gone;

Reality once full of life is now so empty-seeming

The kaleidoscope broken, no more indigo-dreaming

Requiem for Summer

Autumn and the leaves are falling from the old oaks like tears

These foreign trees the heritage of our colonial past

The fire-ravaged mountain will carry the scars for many years

But the dry dust and soot swirling in the wind will not last

Already the soft green follows the season’s first meagre rain

Another week and the fire lilies will stain the ground like

The blood of all those creeping, crawling things that perished

In the turbulent and vengeful beauty of the flames

All the trees of my ancestors cry blood red leaves

Their mourning clearly audible to anyone who believes

That the soft and chilly wind catching their tears

Holds on her breath the tragedy of all the years

Fire has consumed both nature and the living in her path.

In just a few weeks the blackened bones of tree and bush

Will stand as stark reminders over the beauty of the veld,

Decked in her finest as the flowers and grasses rush

To declare life once more in the land of the dead

Yellow, white, azure blue and crimson red

The clouds fall over the mountain’s cliffs and, laughing

Rise up in the sky, tumbling down once again

And, heedless of their broken promises of rain

Vanish in the cool blue sky leaving nature to

Echo the swallows’ keening cry as they prepare

Once more to the lands of my forefathers to fly

The nights draw in, hiding the mountain’s shame

Now the blackened earth retains just a memory of flame.

It’s in these days that the dry rustle of departing leaves

Echoes in the corridors of memory where the departed dwell

And a soft litany of names is chanted by the autumn wind as she

Catches my breath in icy fingers before dissolving in the sun

Charred memories stir like the dead trees in the breeze

The soot and dust of time eddy round their once sturdy trunks

Soon the spiked green hands of grass and eager joy

Of those blooms that flourish after fire’s devastation

Embrace the last tendrils of summer’s shining legacy

And the mountain will emerge anew with the first winter rain

But the dead trees of my forefathers will never rise again

Consigned to the past by government decree

Like old relationships they now just live in memory.

Indigo Days

Lapis lazuli - gold caught in magical ultramarine

Stone of friendship, full of the magic of yore

Stone of the truth treasured for 5000 years and more

Reflection of midnight, stars in the sky

Favourite of Alexander, mined in the Hindu Kush

Stone of healing, a comfort in grief,

In all of these facets I share my belief.

But then come those Indigo Days

When sorrow and sadness darken the sky

The shadows grow longer, claiming the earth

The wind tells of Turquoise lost to the darkest of hues

Lapis Lazuli, that most powerful of blues

Faint hope flickers in splinters of gold

These are the days of Time’s mournful cry.

Sad is the owl as she calls to the dead

Lost in the depths of Life’s dark night

Moods coloured blue, things left unsaid

The past lost in indigo, the future unread

So many things I’d like to say in so many ways

But talking is not an option on these Indigo Days

Silence stalks his victim, words left untold

Hope hangs on the wings of birds of the night

Feathers brush the Indigo air as they take flight

The whisper of hope, the promise of gold

Veined in the Lapis, trapped in indigo stone

Hidden in azure the sky falls into the sea

Somewhere the Watcher sits on his own

Majestic and secret, Lord of Lapis Lazuli.

On these long, slow, silent Indigo Days

The world sadly floats by in an Indigo Haze

Tears turn to Turquoise, heart to blue stone

Life on two levels – mindful at work and at home

In catacombs of the soul, the colour dark blue

Memory like a river, finds its way through

And all I see now are Indigo images of you.