Heaven's Breath

I don’t know how to negotiate the long steep trail with hidden scorpions under loose rocks at home with human muck in a valley existence strolling upward through a thicket of TV images politics of glory, garbage and god the odd arts of money, hierarchy and control nobody knows who unmakes whom I don’t know how to follow the ridges back to the trail and the dead river but stand for a moment to rub the sand from my feet before worrying about the lost vitality and fear of the approaching night and rising smoke dissolving in the sky or conspiring with elements hardly in balance but contorting the psyche I don’t know what is there for me to hope when the rains rejuvenate and flood both the repulsive stench and the loss of pathways linger longer than the flavor of the first drops under the tree the puddle feeds no sparrows but algae that couldn’t dry now trap tiny souls that fail to swell with heaven’s breath R K Singh