As I Watched You Bathing in the Ganges

Something stirred in me as I watched you bathing in the Ganges.

Your young, slender body relinquishing the sari so naturally, rhythmically, it was as though you were dancing your way out of its clutches.

Surrendering your sensuality to the river and putting your finger to the lips of time itself.

Forgetting life was swirling all around you.

A noisy web of comings and goings, ecstasies and wretchedness.

Forgetting that your fragile body held a power over the world that's crippled empires and forged terror in the hearts of the highest.

An alchemic power that can create men, make boys of men, and then turn them into something greater. 

It was as though, with the release of each fold of silk onto those marble steps, delighting in the momentary kiss of your feet, you were dancing your way out of the grip of a stifling society.

Returning to the rhythm of an ancient drum, beat in these mountains by your people long before the great civilizations of this world were even called into the womb.

Before time and language.

When your pristine body was a phenomenon of Divinity, worship, curiosity.

Not a force. An object to be captured and exploited for physical desire and material profit.

And even men like me, who’d roamed freely under the stars and among the peoples of this world, men who’d fancied they had drunk deeply of the many sins and desires of life’s cup, stood embarrassed, shyly peeking through the reeds in awe and wonder at the sheer natural power of your mysterious femininity. Your unchartered beauty.

Bereft of the thirst to possess you, own you, but only to worship at the foot of a tangible alter.

Marveling red-cheeked at the beautiful work of nature’s hand as it sketched the curves of your hips and breathed grace into the simple flow of your movements.

As if you and the water were one.

Childhood friends embracing each other after many years apart.

Calling into question the linearity of time.

Something stirred in me when I saw you bathing in the Ganges.