an early-winter evening walk

the distant silhouetted poplars lean

conspiratorially all to the same degree

gossiping about the electric poles who stand

lopsided tipping this way and that

like puppets slumped, with lank wires linked

or like they’ve had a bit too much to drink

full-tight, scattered, still, the whole lot 

lost in their world of abstracted thought

lost, in the vast expanse of the bare fields

relieved for now of the monsoon yield

and a mob of babblers, bunny-hopping, flies by

loudly cursing both the poles and the poplars sly

loving each other's company but being obdurate

loudly refusing to agree about who is more to berate

they fly arguing from tree to bush unable to decide

and over the hay stacked high by the roadside

that’s rustling with something bustling inside, probably rats

that the dog that’s taken up my trail pauses to sniff at

there’s the smell of hay and smoke and dung and

buffaloes in the air from the temporary gujjar camp

that rises with the dust raised by the speeding van

that rattles by disjointedly making the dog look askance

having changed colour the setting red sun

disappears before it’s even reached the horizon

leaving the distant trees, blue with longing, untouched

and the dog and me to see if we’d get along, if we’d match up