Beautiful Oriental Journey of Life - Rewrite

Beautiful Oriental Journey of Life    
      
Future life of our reborn spirits      
Headed to the forbidden city      
Where dreams soar like dragons      
On wings of saffron visions      
Born of conch echoes      
Whose echo sings of ancient sutras      
Flying on prayer wheels in the sky        
As our hearts meet on a golden hearth      
Where snowy leopards        
Lay down with yaks      
In peaceful pastures        
      
My wife was still very much alive        
and we were taking the train        
from central China to Lhasa.        
Long-haired Tibetans        
in woolen shirts    
dyed sky blue    
and haloed in ancient sunbeams  
cast through the glass windows  
from the mandala sun  
sat across from us.      
Their English syllables    
Rolled like a mountain stream    
In their lament of forgotten ancestors      
Whose souls were lost      
In salty pools scattered like stardust      
Where caravans once gathered Tara’s tears      
      
We disembarked the train        
and looked beyond Lhasa        
across the Himalayas        
lit by sunlight through the clouds.        
Our self-guided tour of the dimly lit rooms    
Of the Potala Palace.        
Took us where the Dalai Lama lived as a boy        
and the ones who came before him.        
      
Until the chants of ghosts      
Gathered in cubbyholes where dust motes rose      
And tears traced my beloved’s face      
Like Brahmaputra tributaries        
Flowing between heaven and earth

She dips her pail in the source
Where water from melted snow
Flows by our yurt
Into a cloud mirror lake
Where our Dharma dreams
Are light poured like lemongrass tea
From the porcelain cup of sky