Synchronicity
for A. Sze

In Bhutan my camera’s click jerks a yak
from her suckling young. Miles up-mountain

a goatherd struggling to lift her dead goat’s feet, stuck
in blue junipers, finds a snow leopard jawing the head.

As I reach for water in the darkness a half-human
half-animal call creates one gold bowl of sound.

Dawn’s green butterflies alight on pines miles
from their home while the yak herders say not migoi,

maybe leopard. Deep in a riot a child is torn off a woman
like a postage stamp. Coffee steam lifts from cups we hold

on the rooftops to join smoke from a still-simmering bazaar.
Thunder rolls on the ground. Mountains don’t answer

the goatherd shrilling for the rest of her flock.
The guard dogs’ hoarse shouts at the leopard’s howl

are swelling thunder’s silence.

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