Kundalini Splendor

Tears

                Kathmandu April 2015

The clear round vase on the table
filled with water holds the world
upside down and magnified, reflecting
the chair-back, the shimmering birch
beyond the window. Deeper

into the woods, shadows
shield the mystery of what sleeps there
having roamed the night as we
turned toward and away and toward
and dreamed our separate dreams,
while the Kathmandu restaurant

whose narrow stone steps I climbed
tumbled into a world turned
upside down in a street no longer recognizable,
turned out of itself the way mayhem
casts out meaning –

this pot where the cook melted ghee
beside the splintered back
of a patron’s chair, this blue scarf
fluttering from the rubble as prayer flags
fluttered above the entrance. The stairs

speak to each other, mystified
by their new arrangement – the first step
grating against the eighth, the ninth
under the fourth, the third beside the fifth.
If this were music, their confusion might
convey the longing for harmony
lost inside the dissonance of chaos,
the moans and cries of the mortal world
with its icy rivers turned to salt.

- Elizabeth Carothers Herron

Elizabeth Carothers Herron suggests that if you wish to contribute to the fund for Nepal,
you can contact the following  www.seva.org  Seva is an organization that has been active in doing helping work in Nepal (and elsewhere) for many, many years.