I've watched with quiet peace the sky talk to the earth, envelop it in a misty rain cocoon, as leaves take on a million shades of green and the world looks fey.

A cocoon that I happily slip into when there is too much- too much at work, to much to think about, too difficult to find a way to say “No”. And it is still work.

Why is egoh a four letter word?
Isn’t it a thread that ties together diverse pieces of what we call the self, each with a will of its own?

My story Trital finds place in the July issue of the Birmingham Arts Journal.

http://tinyurl.com/nnpjos

Why do people self destruct?
Why do people with everything going for them, self destruct?
Saw three instances last week. One at close quarters.
Scary as hell.
Perhaps one ought to see why so many don’t breakdown despite.
Despite all.
Do we as humans have quotas of what we can take? What determines this?
And some don’t- despite all. Amazing.

That tape with the discolored, scratchy cover.
Treasured because it was “from foreign”.
Later, memories of sitting on the swing on the dark porch.
Listening to the same songs over and over again. Even if the words were a jumble.
Strange how the mind remembers.
Where exactly a line reaches higher. How exactly a drumbeat sounds.
As Radio One played a tribute this morning, so much came flooding back.
The day the music died.
What a life.

The Neighbors, my translation of the Gujarati story Padoshi by Pravinsinh Chavda, is up on Calque.

http://calquezine.blogspot.com

This story details two very different life trajectories, mindsets and expectations on the two sides of a fence in a lower-middle class locality. Sometimes life decisions are made much before one’s birth.

The first rains.
Light as a feather.
Drops flurry about in the breeze, not the real monsoon furor as yet.
For so long now I’ve scoured the skies. Scowled at the sun.
Thank the heavens.
Beneath the leaves too, a fluorescent green.
A strange bird warbles out a tune, three clear notes in three octaves.
To all things, a season.

He is a genius-Nobel laureate, fine.
But verse usually stops me short.
What startles is the simplicity, the permission to write what he will, even an Ode to a lemon.
So right.