Sleeping Child

Karachi, Pakistan

Brown and beautiful
in her blue dress,
The child slept
beneath the shop shelves
Where her father kept his needlework,
Brass wares and hand-carved elephants.
White-robed, he sat beside her,
Sewing slowly, wrinkle-eyed,
Seeming to stitch contentment
into their obscure lives.

It was the quiet time.
No shoppers crowded through
the foot-scarred streets;
No motion of the sun betrayed eternity.
And then I chanced upon
this Joseph and his child,
This mortal, deathless pair,
Sewing the soft, sweet threads
of swift humanity;
Sleeping the guileless sleep
of blue-gowned childhood,
Brown and beautiful.