Where Is My Sadhu Painting?
after Snyder’s “7:VII”
“Can’t go wrong. Can’t go wrong,”
a roofer says from our neighbors’
home, on the next roof, as he and others
hammer nails into the asphalt
covering; are they talking of women?
Laughing, chatting, standing there
high above ground till after dark.
I read Snyder’s No Nature, trying
to concentrate. His workers, laborers,
black sudras cover the roof. No rain here,
the hail damage will be removed now.
In Bombay some twenty years ago,
I watched Indian women with multi-
colored saris, pails on top of their
heads, walk up the newly formed floors,
up to the top of a skyscraper, bringing
cement to the brick layers—a rupee
or two for every day of hard labor.
Some walked with babies in their arms,
no one to watch them, no time to waste.
A sadhu in a red kurta, gray hair, sat on
the beach in Goa, meditating, worshipping
the gods who may be out there, at sea.
Can’t go wrong. Can’t go wrong. 
Nov. 8, 2001, New Orleans