He invited me to walk in the wind. My silk scarf whipped upwards like a pair of wings. Strong gusts swept into that secret, wild place in my heart and every sense awakened. Soon rain began falling and, arms outstretched, we lifted our faces to the sky. As it began to sting, we maneuvered atop the narrow mud walls of the rice paddies towards a line of trees. Patches of straw were tossed and scattered from a rooftop in the distance. A pair of wooden shutters rattled against clay walls. The air was charged and the ground echoed a vibration from the rumbling clouds. We shivered, soaked to the bone, yet filled with a fire from the storm.
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Last year when I pored through Rabindranath Tagore’s Stray Birds to create a book of erasure poetry, some words seemed to lift themselves like clouds above the page. If you have the book, read poem 55. It speaks directly to this memory as if the text already knew of the rice fields and the rain. If you would like a copy, visit the Shop Art page above.
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