Leaving Pokhara

Help is proffered but we give you the lightest ;
Small hands and thin backs cannot lift these , not
even musclemen goodwill.

Downstairs a seated row of adorable heads
Arms folded, clear ready eyes large with farewells
swallow our faces with smiling awareness.

Then, open bodies launched as greetings –
good (morning) bye Miss we will miss you ;
a garden decimated a frenzy for final gifts.

Hands are too small for this mountain so eagerly
made, you give us black plastic bags to bring
red, fuchsia, white, yellow away, and we feel the guilt

of stripping so suddenly and widely a rainbow.
Flowers will grow beautiful again, but these earnest offerings
will not last past today.

A final frame of metal gate doorway, within:
three short figures across in endless clamoring columns of black hair bobbing -
I try, but taxi window grime does not relent not even for last