Always with Insects Overhanging
Wind-ripped blue tarp dangles from the houseboat rooftop, knotted
at the center, banana leaf rope. A jar almost full of dead yellow jackets.
Out goes the fire lamp, attraction goes out for the scout, the Queen's
buzz-buzz army will recollect, wind-ripped & under the knot until dawn.
Morning raga opens a red harmonium and breaks down the nest. Sound the warnings
wheezing through the boatman's nose. Bugs crawl, some fly. The rope is frayed.
Eaten.
We wake sooner. The sadhu-howls slim when he sees the sun.
[it is not shining,][he's been stoned and knows we know this].
The light washes, your circuitry stops. Is it the sadhu-howl causing
you to sweat? For a moment, there's a moment and we translate
the percussion's ending. There are smiles, hand pats on backs. Then a taxi comes.
In the waiting room, the lights buzz and the interns laugh off what they don't know yet.
Sleeping men and cats in the hallway spell out where the line is to pay up before treatment.
The fishermen: guides to a new inland
The boats: homes for the spirit hunters
The temple bells: like mosquito flight near our ears
There are no nets in the backwater night,
there has been another strike. The workers.
We feel them sounding out laughter
and remember the moment, the one
beginning this openness.
Entire undoings are biting-down
the finger skin. Sand follows us everywhere,
the floor rumbles like lament. The diamond on your hand. The piercing. Head.
Lapped up in a lap of silence, the cycles surround boat floors and run along the ledges, shine and dog-paw, birdprints, dust and crumbs, transparent wings about to be carried away by a band of bees.
