Aranya
before the streets smell rain
an eye spies an opening in the clouds
the gaze curdles anticipation,
traces a metronome louder than a bomb.
fear splays the sun into smithereens
spreading laughter into the sky
I spoke to him once about it
the morning after
People like to demolish things
To plant a seed you need a flat surface,
he said calmly
and belief is a hungry beast.
his shoulder was a quiver of indignation
He had turned militant, nose wrinkled,
antennae rigid to the sound of the ambulance.
After decades of protecting his home,
merely a memory of coconut palms
and the sepia of streetlamps
illuminating newspaper print,
after seeing his children become fodder at traffic signals
after hiding behind his broken hutment when the bulldozers
came, draped in saffron, and khaki,
the sweeper understood to stay below the gaze, always.
I keep my ear to the ground
Sometimes I hear my mother’s heartbeat
a lori to drown out the sound of development.
Kindness is a moan that doesn’t rise higher
than dream. Nobody notices the sweeper.
But the sweeper notices everything, his shield
is the scurrying of ants before the downpour.
