The Monsoon Mountains

Let’s meet tomorrow.

At the pine forest, one where the tree trunks trace haphazard lines and pine needles gather in thick brown piles on the forest floor.

We could sit on one of those black slate rocks that lie like sleeping mammoths or their fossils long forgotten, half buried in the soft pine beds. We could even flop down, right on the spongy pine stacks and, laying back against the cobbled pine trunks, watch the cloud swathes sail down the mountainside and gather in great white swirls at its base. 

The little mountain stream, now in monsoon spate, its confidence boosted by the deluge of rain water it is carrying, would chatter and chuckle and chortle to some watery gossip at our feet. The fork-tailed swallow would swoop, startling the busybody bugs buzzing around us. Somewhere high up on the road, the milk woman would herd her two white cows, the brass bells at their neck tinkling faintly, their music merging with the mirth of the stream’s babble.

We would not need to talk, You and I. We would just sit there and let the soundless clouds dance between us, filling our noses with their smoky moist smell and as they floated on their way into the valley below, leave footprints of tiny raindrops on our skins.

The thin brown dog with a black back and spiral tail would trot down the mountainside. Then, sniffing at our feet, it would lie down alongside, head between its paws and gaze into the rain shadowed valley below. But we would let it be. Let it be and not even dodge when now and then it stood up and shrugged great showers of rainwater all over us.

It would be nice, you know, to sit there, only You and Me. 
Like that cluster of pink rain lilies growing beside the giant fig tree. 
In silence.
In solitude.

It would not matter right then who I was. Or what You were.

What I had said. And what You did not.

What You remembered. Or what I forgot.

What I had lost. And what You had won. 

What You became. And what I could not.

Why You left. And why I lingered on.

We could sit, up there on the mountainside where few went and came and be just You and I.

We could sit thus, this only You and only I, as long as we wanted. 
Or till the dripping sun faded over the horizon, staining the sky and the clouds a pinkish red. 
Or till your cell phone or mine beeped us back to ourselves and to Today.

Lets meet then. 
Tomorrow. 
The Monsoon Mountains are waiting.