A spec of time on planet Earth.

So many people, each a different soul,
more than a billion, out there.
In this fleeting moment, I wonder
How many have what I do?
As I lie here close to you, and I shut
my eyes, I smell you oozing out of your
pores. Through which you sweat to feed
and clothe me and those I have borne.

As if I were a watchful eye, cast in the clouds,
This tiny little spec of time, I see the sun rising
on an Oriental rice field, upon a woman with her child
tied to her back, who tends the ground and hums
to whom she has borne.

I find a woman on a camel on a scorching land,
wrapped up like a secret gift in her Arabian
clothes, she sways with the camel. Eyes cast on
a mirage or a horizon, led by a string tied to
the nose of the camel by the man,
she glances at him for a split moment as he
conquers this desert to which he is borne.

My eye in the clouds, it sees the thristy
huge fertile mass where rain seldom comes
and many a clan is wiped out of hunger.
I see a small girl with streaks of tears
on her smooth skin, because as of now,
just at this very moment, she is orphaned,
and now none exists to whom she was borne.

So many people out there, so many souls,
how many sleep in peace, to be sure of peace,
and how many are at the peril of the works
of leaders, unkind, with not a moment to think
of them; the many who will smell the blood
as it spills of those with whom they were borne?

Tasnim Jivaji
July 22, 2006