Dawn At Puri

Endless crow noises A skull in the holy sands tilts its empty country towards hunger. White-clad widowed Women past the centers of their lives are waiting to enter the Great Temple Their austere eyes stare like those caught in a net hanging by the dawn's shining strands of faith. The fail early light catches ruined, leprous shells leaning against one another, a mass of crouched faces without names, and suddenly breaks out of my hide into the smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre that fills my aging mother: her last wish to be cremated here twisting uncertainly like light on the shifting sands