Street vendor

 

The city skyline is a step function,

the song’s just static on the radio,

splattered pigeon droppings on the windshield,

and drizzly leaf reflections come and go,

 

there are leopards in the clouds and the lake

is rippling with their roaring open mouths.

Knots of students and their drooping backpacks

slowly move from the north towards the south.

 

The road’s a patchy old moulted snakeskin,

the signal at the crossing a beggar’s claw

telling you to slow down, stop, throw a coin,

make eye contact, perhaps unclench your jaw

 

but the crossing’s a dead end and a slim

young boy stands there selling a smile that's dim.

I've no idea where this has come from :) It's not Kolkata and it's certainly not any city in Fiji I've been to so far. The ones I've visited don't have skylines, all low rise buildings dwarfed/masked by the coconut palm trees...Even after so many years the whole process is utterly incomprehensible, what the brain dredges up from years ago and twists like one of those balloon shaped animals in an instant to look like this and presents as poetry. 

Happy Mother's Day! - to you if you are mothering/have mothered, irrespective of gender. And have an equally happy week ahead.