High Water

How we recoil when the water rises, when software interrupts the news. Who’s in charge here?   The thunder last night. The kids saw lightening everywhere. Now, the house quiet, their absence pulled taught, I pace, restless as a dog. CLICK ON THE RECORDING

Foot Race

Oh, we understand our ridiculousness. Our knee socks and plastic bottles strapped to our waists like warriors from the land of mini-vans and family calendars. Our matching jackets. Our lubricants. Our expensive shoes and cheap talk. The watches we buy. All the slaughtered mornings and the final snap of the gun. But run with us…

Sherpa Dance

“The sherpas are alert for ways in which to be of use… their dignity is unassailable, for the service is rendered for its own sake — it is the task, not the employer, that is served. As Buddhists, they know that the doing matters more than the attainment or the reward, that to serve in…

Threshing machine

I stumble out of a vintage Mercedes to hunker in the stubble, blend into the background like a roman candle, tape recorder tipped in your general direction. You catch my eye as if to say that this spilling of the fruit is only part of it, the grains under your feet and in the cracks…

Banging Brass

The back streets of Bhaktapur run and run: feet in rice, and hands in black clay, the city labours under harvest. Hand-pressed brick posing for the next natural disaster. These girls, elbows linked: their unbreakable chain.     CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN

Fire

This time and these stars and this smoke rising. Your hands on the girl and her hands on stone, the night so black the sound travels years to meet itself at the start.   CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN