BY JAN HAAG
CROSSROADS
At a crossroads,
indistinguishable from the landscape,
we hopped
off the Jalna bus.
Undifferentiated though it was from the
stones
and rocks of the earth,
at this crossroads
we
disembarked to catch the bus to Ajanta.
At his intersection
no more
noticeable than dust, random stones pushed aside,
no different
than villages out there,
across rock and dirt,
made of rock and
dirt,
under a savage sun,
in sand,
we waited
-- not
too long --
for the next bus to stop
at a spot marked
by
memory,
no doubt,
for there was no visible mark a stranger could
see
to distinguish this bit of land
from the terrible vengeance
with which God made grey rocks,
grey earth,
harsh sun.
We
stood with our burdens,
as did the Indians,
under the sun
at
the junction of one way with another,
where houses, like landscape,
lay north,
but not south,
where the sun cast no shadow,
for the stones and walls were too low to impede the light.
The
road was as smooth as land
trod by people for a thousand years and
more.
I would guess at another way
only with the moon's slow
rise.
Beside men of fuchsia turbans
we hopped off the bus,
stood with women
holding spider-fine children.
They, too,
from lives of rock and stone,
were bussing to Ajanta.
At the
crossroads --
not distinguishable from the land,
but crossing
from one state into another,
from Jalna to Ajanta, where mountains are
plains,
plains are sky --
the rocks beneath our feet glittered
like stars.
The crossroads: one way angled to another,
intricate
as the structure of time,
as a junction of the
spirit,
crossroads of the imagination,
the decussation of worlds
where bonds,
invisible as light,
light as air
bind
us as surely as God's thought.
The center is a line of division,
the joining of worlds,
the dust of union.
Copyright © 2000 through 2015 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jjhaag@gmail.com
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