Chennai

Day Fourteen


I remember your stories
Of photo trips through India
The colors
The colors are what you spoke of most
I selected one 11x14
Of cloths draped from a window, drying
One blue, one red, one yellow
High from an upper story they fell in contour
Across the peeling gray building
No air to lift the moisture from their folds

But the one I cannot forget
That pierces through me still
Is black and white
A young girl, maybe ten
Long dark hair plaited
Beyond the shoulder and soft about the face
Blown by gathering winds that rippled
Through her white shirt and pleated skirt
The dark sky looming
As her bare feet hugged the crop-worn soil
One turned inward toward the other
In shy uncertain wonder betraying
What the eyes would not