"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to Man as it is— Infinite" ~ William Blake

a gnat-cloud of tongue-clicks & sigh-breaths

from the crowd waiting for the temple doors

to open— faces joining the line crane their necks

to cluck at how long the line is— a centipede

suddenly aware of its many legs with swollen

clots around the range of the wall-fans

two boys weave in & out of the grasps

of their parents— one running to the trees

of the nandavanam garden the other flying

to the temple pond & calling out to his brother—

look how much water there is— before the father

reigns them in but the little boy tired of waiting

for his father's god wants to go when someone

asks him how will you reach home without your parents?

he answers i'll call an uber on my phone

the uncle-aunties laugh a kids-nowadays laugh

when the young mother play-fights with her son

& becomes for a moment a child again i miss

some vague possibility in the future— the door

opens & everyone is devout again

amidst a boiling bloom of thin grandma-voices

murmuring prayers i find myself murmuring

the next lines of this poem— the doors are always open

for those of us who try to belong to that faithless faith

of the here & the now— my door is already open

but i'm going along for the hell of it

~ ajay

29/11/2021