Flicker

On your brow,
those lines, they are mine.
I’ve seen them before.

There by the mango tree in the garden,
down which the grey-blue caterpillars of summer inched and itched onto the ground, going crunch crunch under your big boots?

I winced as you walked, but you went anyway.
You had things to do, places to visit, people to see,
Important stuff that you couldn’t explain, I wouldn’t understand.

Don’t ask why you said, it just had to be done…
Ghosts laid to rest so they wouldn’t come haunting you again.
Lifetimes of debt counterbalanced, from your savings of many births.

Pockets of your soul were they now full enough,
Now deep enough, now generous enough,
As you walked, the loose change, it jangled.

“What will I do till then?” I asked.
You shrugged. “Find something”.
But, you half-turned, and frowned. Don’t lie. I saw it.

The white madras cotton fluttering against your steely shoulders…
The line and the cut and the curve of it all
Is mapped into fingers that have been searching across lifetimes

So unlike you,
that flicker of doubt.
The memory of it unclouding you from the rest for eternity.

That was a few lifetimes ago.
The tree’s been felled,
The caterpillars still appear from time-to-time.

And lest you think my feet have turned into the roots you planted them by,
What I’ve been doing with myself since then
doesn’t concern you anymore, so don’t ask.

Are you done? Let’s go inside
Coffee is freshly brewing
I have no more patience for long absences and karma.