Counting Breads
Sunlight flickers
Escaping around tall prayer flag
surfeited with prayers.
The morning wind blows,
not too gently.
with promises of an uncomfortable afternoon
Old Dawa walks with his prayer wheel
and Rayban glasses.
Sending prayers upto heaven,
to descry his death.
Whose weight sits heavily on him,
along with remembrances of sins,
now recollected with the wisdom of age.
His faltering feet,
adhere to the rules of rheumatism
while he mumbles a prayer for compassion.
Propelled by some need to live forever.
At the feet of a prayer chant,
sleeps another day.
Agnes in her borrowed dress,
fingers her rosary with the shyness
and trepidation of a new lover.
The beads slip between fingers.
So that she falters between her chants
and loses sight
of the smiling Buddha in her mind.
She saw her life gape greedily at her
full of emptiness
and fled.
Only to be taught that the aim of life
was "emptiness".
The eyes of heaven,
quietly wink again
Sonam smiles at neighbours,
sliding over queries and prayers
She would like to have
a turquoise ring.
Large and blue.
The golden Buddha's eyes,
burn her wandering heart,
and dropping a coin into a beggar's bowl.
She worries about a "chubba"
for the new year
and milk for breakfast.
The dust spawns majestically,
uninterpreted illusions and dreams.