Poem: Nepal by Harry Palacio

Nepal

By Harry Palacio
QuailBellMagazine.com

​Hiking up the long drift of mountain into town
The Holy man blessed us in a happy beginnings ceremony, a solemn puja
He chanted Sanskrit mantras and touched our Ajna chakra,
​I had a moment of deja vu as I remembered this place from a dream I had years ago

That gentle memory lingered there for days
What is real?  Before sunrise like the quiet words of the wind, the winding roads of Nepal touching heaven, mountains like stoic cities in the sky, wild air, chai tea, coffee, marijuana growing feral
Our bus snakes up and down the cliffs watching the oceanic ridges of trees whiten softly as we chase the foaming dogs of the river
Under this rose quartz sky where I sit on a staircase of bricks and smoke a Nepalese cigarette, my mind wandering in the quiet
We hiked for two hours or so up the mouth of the mountain
Awake before sunrise listening to the Madal drum of rain beating onto the ground and on our shoes
I've remembered this road again despite never being here
Kathmandu, Nepal is a city of my dreams, digging ethereal memories from the black night and the bulbs of stars
An immense mountain wearing a laurel of snow speaks to the mist and translucent clouds
We were carried to the Tal Barahi temple on a row boat over phosphorescent green rippling Holy water blessed by the Goddess of the lake, I washed my hair by its cool jeweled caress
I feel myself budding from the mountains, the tendrils of these experiences marking the foothills of my life
This rain passes through me like a kukri purifying: the ruby air, the slow cawing of crows, the wild sleeping dogs, and the whisper of the moon
Hawks part the sky, circling like the mallet of a singing bowl looking into the deep beyond like the trance of a sadhu
The hills ebb and fold over into the white mist
I close my eyes and the thoughts in my mind gentle as a white winged moth in the azure night come and go
The stars touch the clouds bending and arching as I inhale the black night glow, slow breaths deep and cosmic
The Big Dipper pours over its esoteric amber spell and I sink into these halcyon days
Swollen astral whispers of wildness hum as I let the lips of the universe like tides, curl against my mind
O Thamel, O Nagarkot, O Pokhara, O Kathmandu we have moved up your solemn streets and pulsed through your cities
Rain carries the slow white consuming mist forwards into the valley, we are dreamers sunken into the rose pink lining of the grail of clouds leaving Holy offerings for Shiva