An October Day In 1968 Poem by Jim Coleman

If I could fast rewind my life, the frame
I would stop at would be that distant day
when I first spied the Himalayan
peaks from the cockpit of an old aeroplane
as it lumbered up from the Gangetic plain
across the paddy fields of faraway
Nepal and its strange and unsettling ways.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
.
The UN jeep pushes warily through
the crush of crowd. A clanging temple bell.
A scrawny cow strolls nonchalantly by.
The pungent air. So this is Kathmandu.
I am dropped off at a cheap hotel.
There's just a bed. I sit on it and cry.