Landscape Without Figures Poem by umashankar manthravadi

noontime and normal nothing
abnormal in the reach of the small
unskeining spool of fishnet thread
slipped drawn by the wind across
fingerprinted sand

caught in a scurrying
bent crab's knee

floated by wind and weed
lit by the sun

suddenly diminished sea
sound and tree sound plain
windsong

and a child
now too full of the events since
cries his heart out inside me

is
called back to
satisfactory
consoling
forgotten
taste
and sound
of small underthighs slapping
against cool wetted floor

hot windy day
you walk a little distance
over the humped grass crusted dune

where sunbaked
windblown
sand burns bare skin

covers and uncovers
an eyeless orange fishskin

bay grave
sea silenced for the unmoving minute

as sand uncovers a burrowing toe

single person singular one man walking carefully on
the stiff cold spiked weed patch path

over blown baked sand

in silence wind snatches

words

agitated
cross

out of context

from distant conversation

noontime and
a prayer is about to be said
for a child cradled
in the saffron arms of his father

for burial
on the other side of the hump

-June 28,1972