just another sunday morning

the road was glistening black reflecting cars and streetlights and people yesterday

but this morning it is somber ash the colour of a house crow’s neck pale grey

a squirrel stops to sniff from time to time as it climbs on by

up the silver oak it’s leaves still upturned silver bellies to the sky

and beneath parallel wires stretched out between poles where pigeons rest

crisscrossed by unruly black cables tied in random messy knots to parapets

on the jig-saw puzzle that their zig-zag shadows create on the ground

a man’s washing his car doors open mats out with a steady scraping sound

a dog walks to the center of the road stretches yawns and lazily flops down

at the spiky edge of the star-burst shadow of a coconut tree’s crown

a hit-and-run victim except for the missing chalk marks and no blood around the head

a vagabond tramp who thinks the world’s home and all reasonably comfortable surfaces bed

there’s the distant rolling rumble of a plane again though it’s too far to see

and the persistent hammering at the construction site hidden from view by the trees

pale blue smoke hangs motionless against white clouds on the distant horizon beyond

beyond the bare skeleton of a massive highrise with an immense yellow crane perched on top

a little girl with ribbons in her hair weighed down by shopping bags steps out of a car

and it gives a little honk for the dog to move as it goes down the road to park

past the woman who stands at the gate very still face down sunning her hair

past the guard who sits beside his broken sunglasses in his broken plastic chair

nonchalantly watching the world go by with his swollen foot up against a pole

pulling out a bidi from his shirt pocket as the dog comes to sit by his side of the road

a boy cycles past the row of cars and the  blue piaggio carrier van parked right at the end

he pedals fast and shakes his head from side to side feverishly ringing the bell

a breeze picks up listlessly shaking the leaves as behind fluffy white clouds the sun again goes

the car cleaner’s left a patch of black tar where he washed it down with his garden hose