Attempts at poetry #1

The room she lives in is small, spartan.
It's littered with holy books - yogis & gurus;
a portrait of Gandhi rests on the wall.
There's a small and gentle stove on one side, and a soft bed waits
in the center of the room.
A radio stretches out on the bed, she listens to it every night.

We crash through the trees
Past the watchful eyes of the mountains,
And under a sky scratched with red,
weighed down by a pregnant dark eternity.
We are heading home,
find out about where to head next
see the roots from which we've grown,
and grow some more with that knowledge.

Home.
I have never lived there.

He searches for peace and meaning, here in his hometown
but he does not know what that means, or where it leads;
ducks under a fan that wants to trim his hair.
Her life is happy, great peace in being there
in the ancestral house, looking for ...
she feeds him, they talk, he learns of a life without fortune.
Of days talking to children, of helping in schools

He nearly cries.
But I don't.

We see the serene street, where our forefathers ran as children.
Touch a tree so giant, so massive,
that surely they would also have known it?
Wander through an old house, where they would have grown,
eat simple food cooked by a relative
breath part of a life that might long be lost;
a life that they might have lived.
He feels calm in the presence of this area.

Calm.
But I know nothing will change.

Visiting a house, a street, a town
seeing a woman whose life is different from mine,
feeling calm for a day or two -
there is no change inside.
I still want more
than the calm life that they might have lived;
seeing the calm, living the area
will only be a memory.

I fly out today.