
ride and rice
ride and rice,
anthem of ours,
speak we must
of such hours:
in the distance
where parallel lines meet,
where pronghorns and unicorns
gallop on the outsides of the
fickle nature of human forms,
where one can catch glimpses
of a half naked child
with a mucuous bleeding nose
crying frantically at the side of
clay walls fed by cow dung stoves,
that woman with her dark face
brightly lit as she pulls out
her collection of rag-made bags
trying to make a sales pitch
in search of her next meal,
those brackets of the day
that we call afternoons
when lazy annas huddle
around trees to culminate
on village fictions,
that old amma tired from
selling spiced capsicum
for forty years of her life,
that could have been very different,
perhaps happier,
had she been married elsewhere,
that sunset with a full sun,
now bared of its rays,
all orange and red,
embracing the grey of the dusk
infront of it,
those homeward cattle,
goats, cows and their babies,
all perplexed at the need for
whips from sticks by their human elders
even though they know their way back,
all too distinct,
all too insignificant,
all in the distance:
in the distance,
no more melted epiphanies
from bottled up resentments
of the years bygone,
no more belongings
and high natured lament
for things from the vault,
no more lessons from
ghosts trying to be priests
for the future to dwell,
no more seizures of
panic volatility from
dormant to moderate
fate of familia,
all that's to come
is a cosmos of possibility,
endless and rustic,
humming sounds of
winds upon trees,
sprinkling curvatures
of enlightened clouds,
paddy and hay,
earth and bay,
bending green growths
across vast and fast
moving fields of light
and of green rice
carved into squares,
sometimes rectangles,
by mud and wet earth,
vastly stretching
periphery vision,
faces and figures,
all unfathomed and unseen,
all living and breathing,
all in the distance:
ride and rice,
anthem of ours,
speak we must
of such hours: