Where Is My Sadhu Painting?

“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