In India

While we were eating dal and rice
out of bowls made from dried leaves
the servers shoed away
the children who were begging
outside the wall.
Surely, you would have had them in
but you didn’t see.

I’d like to imagine that the man
in the black and white suit
was torn, that he could imagine
for a minute or so
the mud turned to grit on his chin
and his elbows, and that his children
never would have to stand
against a wall because once
with a high jump and a hard pull
he raised himself out of a tiger trap.