From the Rickshaw by Kathryn Lane: Photo by Gottlieb

On Wednesday, May 8th at 7pm, the Friendswood Public Library will host

A Conversation on India through Photography and Poetry: An evening celebrating the culture of India featuring photographs by Brenda Gottlieb and poems by Kathryn Lane. 

This poetic and visual travel narrative is a journey of the heart and a journey of the soul. Through words and photos, Lane and Gottlieb pull readers into an intensely physical and sensual world, and then go further, into a spiritual world that is at once imaginative and real and compelling. A Conversation on India is an exceptional work of art.

—Lowell Mick White, author of That Demon Life 

From the Rickshaw    

Overhead

electrical wires

droop

like sleepy eyelids.

Women in red, purple and orange saris

light up the street like neon signs

as jeweled bracelets bangle

on their wrists.

A driver

pedals and pedals,

dancing the rickshaw,

like a flamingo, through the crowd.

He pedals past shops,

in sandalwood scented air,

calling –barber, spices,

betel leaves, panipuri, pan.

A body in a swath of white linen

on top a bamboo stretcher,

high on the shoulders of four men,
passes by slowly, silently.

The driver stops pedaling,

he turns to whisper, 
but the crowd is loud

and I cannot hear what he says.

Poem by Kathryn Lane

Photograph by Brenda Gottlieb