Category: A Traveler’s Lines

by Gord Sellar

The cold of winter is thick even here,
spread as if by a knife; the land is dry,
hungry, and teenagers don’t notice. They
stride in toques and blues jeans, speaking
Americanese to one another through the blurring
cavatinas of their accents. I’m not sure what it
means to see this on Christmas Day, as
opposed to any other day of the year.
A little girl clutches blonde Barbie dolls
in their full pink regalia, one in each little
fist, and I don’t remember ever seeing anyone
as happy as this kid with the booty of Christmas,
not in the epic flashing of nightclub lights,
not on television, not even in the ocean of
the internet, not even on magazine covers,
and I am not sure what to make of the grin.
The child is not alone in loving plastic tresses,
in staring gleeful at strange girls in pink dresses.

— 2003, New Delhi

by Gord Sellar

The day’s weight sank it into its detritus,
dust-drenched hair, the leftover shakes
and groaning belly soothed by sweet, cool lemonade;
against the dingy whisper of strange bedsheets,
exhaustion a decrescendo planed into longing
as the cusp of sleep slips closer and closer,
my thumb, tip to the middle of palm, smoothing
soft across forehead, exactly just like this;
the swirling edge of a half-memory diluted
into weariness, the French-tinged voices returning
from Laure and Jérome, deep in that wintry night
of snow and apple wine and tales of poojas
in Nepal, the scent of a sweet pink paste
from the crushed bodies of hundreds of flowers
never seen by them, spread from cheek to forehead
and back; a safety fixed on the fate of travelers,
beloved wanderers at the doorway out. And strange,
in my wandering, I dream of anointing you,
the dinge of this upper room suddenly flooded
with the brilliant sweet aroma of these blooms.

— Agra, winter 2004