Sketches & Stanzas 1

Windows wish to be wagon wheels.
Meanwhile, they move us closer to sky, sun,
and the promise of beauty above the ground we travel.

GoodBean
Jacksonville, OR
January 2015

I close my eyes to see the world

Prayer flags in Kathmandu, Nepal

I Close My Eyes to See the World 

I leave Kathmandu by bus

on a smog-sunny afternoon

after watching cremations

across Bagmati River. I lay 

a thin scarf along my west-facing

arm to shield from sun. 

 

Beneath the dark cotton, 

my skin looks the color of ash.

But I am alive. I close my eyes.

In the lull and lurch of rough road,

I doze. The city goes on for traffic hours.

I open my eyes to steep villages,

 

to rice terraces lipping down the hills.

I close my eyes. The scarf above my body

becomes a prayer flag kissing

my skin. Have I embodied prayer?

The bus steels to a stop. I open my eyes

in a sleepy blink and think 

 

I see a strand of prayer flags.

But no—a line of laundry

bright with the same five colors—

clothing for bodies belonging

to spirits I’ll never meet.

I close my eyes on this bus

 

full of people wrapped in prayers,

wondering at our highest arrival.

Behind my eyes, worlds form with new 

words for old fabrics and habits. 

I don’t know if I am praying 

them or they are praying me.

 

  

[This poem appears in the anthology, Deep Travel: Souvenirs From the Inner Journey]