nancy margulies
03-21-2008, 10:03 AM
I attended the event in India and found it to be a lesson in how powerfully our choices of what we notice, what we attend to, impacts what we see. I saw the sacred and the profane. The best and worst of times. The poem I am posting here reflects all that in the story of a cab ride. I also made visual image records of the event and will post one of those here as well. Nancyhttp://www.nancymargulies.com/images/dalailama.jpg
The poem is:
[b]Journeys
How did we come to this?
Racing down the mountain road, dark, wet, narrow,
our driver, I didn't catch his name --
A cigarette in one hand, adjusts the tape,
American music that
that runs slow, then too fast
As we are swept around dangerous curves,
women and children
dogs, cows, each in the path of on coming
vehicles
men silent, motionless on the side of the road
This, our journey
Or,
it was:
Lucky, we came to this.
our driver is called Ravi, an Indian man
his family greatly respected by their
Tibetan neighbors,
his mother's courage now legendary:
that night she stood at the gate
She saved Tibetan lives.
Lucky
Ravi comes in his taxi, playing American music
his dinner hastily prepared awaits him,
but first he is propelling along this road
his skill and ease in contrast to our
amazement.
Each person, car, dog, cow, child, woman
man moves just the slightest bit
avoiding calamity by a fraction of an inch
It is a symphony orchestrated by an
Agreement too complex for our imagination
Lucky.
We are not walking
Lucky.
The rain is now a drizzle
Making each light a star
Blurring edges into color and form
The movement is of one
Living being
and we,
Lucky,
are part of it.
And so we arrived.
Through this door,
or that,
0ff this bus
that train,
by foot,
or not.
We came through our lives
flying up the the mountain
endangered, blessed
exhausted, enthralled
to this moment
this place
this breath in
now out.
Just this.
The poem is:
[b]Journeys
How did we come to this?
Racing down the mountain road, dark, wet, narrow,
our driver, I didn't catch his name --
A cigarette in one hand, adjusts the tape,
American music that
that runs slow, then too fast
As we are swept around dangerous curves,
women and children
dogs, cows, each in the path of on coming
vehicles
men silent, motionless on the side of the road
This, our journey
Or,
it was:
Lucky, we came to this.
our driver is called Ravi, an Indian man
his family greatly respected by their
Tibetan neighbors,
his mother's courage now legendary:
that night she stood at the gate
She saved Tibetan lives.
Lucky
Ravi comes in his taxi, playing American music
his dinner hastily prepared awaits him,
but first he is propelling along this road
his skill and ease in contrast to our
amazement.
Each person, car, dog, cow, child, woman
man moves just the slightest bit
avoiding calamity by a fraction of an inch
It is a symphony orchestrated by an
Agreement too complex for our imagination
Lucky.
We are not walking
Lucky.
The rain is now a drizzle
Making each light a star
Blurring edges into color and form
The movement is of one
Living being
and we,
Lucky,
are part of it.
And so we arrived.
Through this door,
or that,
0ff this bus
that train,
by foot,
or not.
We came through our lives
flying up the the mountain
endangered, blessed
exhausted, enthralled
to this moment
this place
this breath in
now out.
Just this.
