Melissa has returned from India.
My child of twenty thousand leagues
flying over Mt. Everest.
Twenty nine thousand feet.
Twenty nine million light years
at the top.
She watched it like a star
taken from an oven.
A loaf of light
cooked in the crucible of Heaven.
She saw the treasure of the Taj Mahal,
her heart filling with temples,
mosques, pagodas, ancient cities,
Kathmandu at the paws of the Himalayas,
until a great slumber of riches
weighed on her shoulders,
and she retreated to her bed.
Turned to the lightness of her pillow,
and slept,
as if a burden of too much beauty,
too much prayer,
too much grandeur,
was being lifted,
and the clouds returned
to their normal height,
the sun no longer blinding her,
the cacophony of the wind
became a gentle murmur,
and she wanted only a seed
from each hallway, wall, road
she had seen,
to plant in the sand
of a sleeping shore,
erecting castles
for the water to wash away.