Kathmandu

Sometimes  I hate this

just like the way you can hate a dangerous lover,

beautiful and hypnotic

cruel and unpredictable

But you can’t turn away

And take the pain for the thrill of the pleasure.

On the rooftop terrace, geraniums and petunias flower with the same gay colour

as in my beach side garden so far away.

And below me hectic Kathmandu roars and roils

Strange black birds wheel and scream over my head.

Moving with fleet unknowable mystery.

I wonder how it came to this.

My small suburban life, mortgages and thinking about buying a new washing machine.

School lunches, Saturday morning netball and fish and chips on Friday night.

Now - a rooftop terrace wth the same  bright flowers in pots.

But nothing else is the same.