Stalled

El Niño has stalled the merry advance
of the monsoon. But if you’ve ever
sat on a Kerala beach and seen the 
giant cloud mass approaching, you know
this is a lesson in proportion, circumstance,
strength, suffering, song and mercy. And
I write the words down on a sheet
of paper and they terrify me. And I think 
of how the lady next door has let her 
jasmine grow on a bamboo arch that 
I pass under before I reach her door 
and the scent or the possibility of scent, 
softens my footsteps and uncreases 
my forehead and I get to her, somehow 
open to earth and sky and welcome. 
And I wonder if all arrival is a formula – 
computable. And if you ever broke 
through whatever was stopping you 
and jumped over my wall, if I will wait 
on the step and if it will rain and rain 
and where the moonlight catches an 
intersection on the trellis, if a flower will 
bloom and perfume the entire garden. 

#Poetry

One of those poems that arrived whole, just before I fell asleep! And I was lucky enough to remember it all (almost all) in the morning. Apparently we now have a 42% monsoon-deficit - the poems of this season are going to be quite different!