Why do I walk?

I walk so I may look down at a mandible & conjecture what might’ve happened.

Or to look up and marvel at a flutter of egrets in breeding plumage v-ing to roost.

Or be astounded to find, in high hot summer a full cool well, below a rise of desert dune.

I walk to be able to truly "see"

Why do I walk?

So I may share a path with a shepherdess and hear her story

For the joy of pulling up last monsoon’s rainwater from a dhani's tanka, and feel it course over a salt encrusted face

To be grateful for the warmth of strangers who call the nearest village for an express order of cool lassi (and refuse money)

I walk to feel alive

Why do I walk?

To feel the land change

Dune footprints to sandstone steps. Pink? Gold? Flecked!

Spiny-tailed lizard land - hard, to gerbil homes.

Soft Grassy lakebeds to arroyos w last monsoon’s memories

I walk to un-cocoon myself

And find old magic

Underfoot.

Why do I walk?

To offer only a chush-chushing of treading feet

So that I can hear the ocean in a khejri

And the wingbeat of a bee

The call of a frog

And the rustle of a wren

I walk so I may listen, and hear

Once again.