Sometimes I feel like an Orangutan

with my long hands that fall
way below my knees and are forever hungry
               for another hand

 and I have intense nightmares
    of tigers, leopards, wild dogs
and crocodiles
which are followed by dreams
of shapely women with slender breasts
                and orange hair

and at certain places
    like where the banyan tree walks
down the hill
I feel a sense of deep
  where every birdcall, every whiff of breeze
every turn of leaf, every pile of dust
   are words from a language
                 I completely understand

so I sit with my eyes fixed at a distance
as if far across the valley
  I was raptly reading
     the slowly scrolling
                 plan of everything

and I don't think about who I am
or where I want to be
because I know that this here-now
                    is all there is

though I feel a deep frustration
    because I lack the speech
to tell all these humans
that if you build a roof
the stars don't stop walking       
                   across the skies

so I sit under a tree
looking at the easy perfection
   of the sunlight
while I nibble at a long blade of grass and
                    suck the sap.


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Salil Chaturvedi
salilwheels@gmail.com