Agra: Scene One

(Yowl and creak of steel on rail)

Yellow grain of dawn filters

Dream dissolve slow-mo pan.

Glass fitted for others frames

Scenes that aren't our own;

No marble covenant to a love

Shimmered in weightless air,

No symmetry of tended heart

Or lily flutter of stolen sighs

Across ornamental ponds.

A ragged cast of extras

Milling through sleep haze;

Dust of rail yard edgeland scrub

Scuffed into the wiry dance

Of a morning prayer; sun as

Angular as the banshee rails

That skirt a scene of daily rhyme -

The squat and dump of body dredge

And shit, mustard-yellow like dhal.

March 2014