Sundera and youngest grandchild

Flying to Kolhapur

The plane crawls like a bug
across a blue plateau.

It knows nothing about how
in the sky's white mountains
women and men aim
their AK-47s at God.

Like the racket of beating crow wings
as a car approaches and the birds scatter
from a fox corpse on the road,
angels' lips drum chaotically as the angels flee
the rotted flesh they've for so long
torn to pieces with gossip:

dark-skinned Ravenna who tried
to protect the south

Prometheus, the owner
long ago
of a bucket of burning coals stolen from heaven

big-hipped Eve who shook the earth as she stomped to a fro, humping
first one tree trunk, then another.

My spirit is in the white mountains, preparing
to enter a ravine.
Being in my late 60s, my daughter wants me to act my age.
But why?
I love the heights and my aim is still sharp.

The pilot announces our imminent landing.
A field of wind-bent tall grasses appears outside my window.
I step out of the plane, squinting
in the bright light.

photo: The foot as map of ts own journeys

Near the Bhima River East of Pune

There, un
ripened, a slightly
yellowed green, smooth

as an untried idea, the young
coconut waits between branches
for what the young unknowingly
always wait for:

a fruition, a coming
of age, after which

the coconut is
broken open
and gutted, left

a shell of itself, unaware

of what
if any
purpose it once served

Arrived in Pune last night after 10 days in Belgaum. Here two more nights, then to Mumbai for three days after which Adriana and kids fly back to States and we return to Belgaum. Have written a poem entitled "Meeda Mama Is Dead." So far the trip has been a combination of pleasant and emotionally exhausting. In Belgaum Vimal's fresh bhakeri in the early morning keeps me going. As always here in Pune Brother Gune and Sindhu Akka are wonderful . . . Another year now, 2010. No one knows what will happen now.