Samsara Study
by Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo
All week at home in Chennai, dodging
rickshaws and touts, cow manure, mosquitos, I track
the water level sinking in the five-gallon jug
that hulks in the living room corner. Empty,
we leave it outside for the driver to replace, but
Veena, who cuts our fruit and washes our clothes,
carries a new one in and upends it
into the stand, not spilling a drop. The water
from the shower head thickens
my hair. I keep my mouth closed. I heard
a hasty electrical job in these new-built houses
shocked a wet ex-pat. Now Veena steps into
her shoes to leave. Afternoon’s heat crowds
across the threshold kolam, lacework emblem
of rice flour, a sign of welcome. Each morning,
she dribbles a new one through her fingers.
I’m thirsty. I go to the corner jug, but when glass
reaches lips, chlorine stuns my nose. Untouched,
I put it down. Home from teaching, my host sniffs it,
wrestles the jug out. Veena must have
flagged a water truck, she says. What’s in there
is not clean enough for us, despite
lotuses enameled on the blue tanker-trailers,
Sri Lakshmi hovering over exhaust.
In this city, high-rises are being built barefoot.
For years I told students that varna and karma dictate
life’s purpose as well as oppress: your actions
turn the wheel to which you’re attached;
each person’s duty clear as the clean-not-clean
we sent glugging into dry dirt.
Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo is a poet, educator, faith leader, and caregiver. Her debut collection INCARNATION, AGAIN was published in 2022 by Wipf & Stock. Recent poems can be found in The Christian Century. Elizabeth curates the Visiting Writers Series at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, where she serves as Canon for Education and the Arts.
