I wrote this poem in 1989 thinking about my trip.
A tiny piece of peel
I sniff and remember a smell of wild fruit
in the trees lining all the roads unpaved and paved of that country
I see contoured in the shape of this tiny peel it is so unreal to me now
it was so long ago more like a dream we were a travelling machine had to go
had to see had to feel had to be something else than an American in America
I was an American in India where I was born again smelling the sweet skin
of the perennial fruit of life that goes on and on here for more than five thousand years
civilization has been thriving their culture touched by Buddha’s compassionate wisdom
and by Vishnu’s massive armies and by Allah’s granite godliness so vast so huge so complex
I gaze upon the Taj Mahal and wonder at its marble monumentality sleek and smooth
and white beyond white clouds in the thin hot dry air sweating all day and into the night
no air-conditioning in our hotel just to sweat and eat hot spicy food to make you sweat
more but lots of fruit in between yes and fresh yoghurt and yes sometime
nothing the money ran out we had to live by our wits not much to live on
like so many there without so much but they live on and find a way
to smile and share a story or the last piece of bread
I was tired and skinny when I got back but I made it
and see a tiny peel and feel all over again the pain
and the suffering and the bliss and the simple
pleasures of a day in the life watching an
elephant lumbering along topped by a boy
on his way I’m on my way too I’m
going going gone!
