In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

Every now and then laughter broke out, thunderous, like birds flapping their wings.

I sensed a certain lingering familiarity upon walking into a temple, even if it was a completely strange one, as if I were returning to a place I’d known from another time, another life.

We are capable of extraordinary beauty if we dare to dream.”

you are my temple and my garden, my sacred ground, and in you I see all of my dreams.”

lotus pads and blossoms emerging like tentative brushstrokes in an artist’s painting.

their presence is no more than mist.

dream and reality were one and the same.

“We are all echoes of one another,

You are my one single star. My sun, my moon, my guide and direction.

the moon was a white hole in a black sky.