In this one I am happy. I cannot think
Of any other photograph in which such
Unencumbered happiness shines out
Because the eye I am looking into,
In that clicking of a moment,
Was to be my lover, days into
Our first falling.
I’m laying on the grass in Sarnath, India
Early evening light, warm, but cooling
Wearing a green Kurta (now too small)
His gifted ear rings (long lost) decorate
My face radiating a giving laugh, my eye
Looks directly to me now.
We’d come in from the brick stack, a chimney
With igloo furnace at its base that peppers
the flat Ganga plains. Lets go in, I said.
To my surprise, he led us into darkness.
It was a bat that gave us fright. We turned
And ran reaching for the others hand
Brushing against the dark and sooted walls.
Outside, a group of Indian children gathered
Looking at us blackened up. We laughed
At each other forgetting, we were the mirror
Of the other.
Laying on a charpoi not long after
So confident of love, seeding then
We dared to talk of this love ending
A fast track through a future yet to happen
A moment that would pin point joy and pain
Then made love, our bodies, minds affirming
The fan above us whirling.
Like opening a corked perfume bottle
Looking at this image, now, I can
Still touch, smell, taste, that love,
That time, that beginning and that ending.
Kalikellett 