1. Exile
A brute gauntlet. A widening moat
Twice-barren fields seeded with stone
nourish those who'll never leave
What distant castle commands these heights?
What thorny outposts sentence men
To shatter bridges. And legs
Between home and land, exile takes hold
A terrain. A birthright

2. Truce
Unfed. The rutted earth throbs
Stubborn fields insist on yielding thistles
and graves. On a schoolhouse
slate, the numbers add up
Households minus sons and daughters
equals. Goat at the stake
Teacher/ Goat/ Teacher. Each throat,
like the yielding earth, throbs
Then doesn't

3. Riverstrike
What are your rivers for?
Boulder broken streams stammer to a ha ha alt
Mid fall (Easily forgotten, cliff-battered
corpses tossed into a quarry?)
Secreted blades squeezed into fists
with no cry or scream
Fists slammed into walls and roofs
Kukhri-wielding. Embedded. Waiting
For the downward stampeding rivers'
Cold Cold Call

4. Malaise
A nation reft of sense
to know its distant (distanced) pain,
like the Himal it hides beneath,
a source, a gathering force
that never closes in, but leaves each
less sure
of what the heart can do
and people be

Kathmandu. 10/03