The Nest They Know

In the morning in the slums
trash heaps down the slope to the railroad tracks
slim pickings for goats among cloth rags, crushed cans, plastic in all forms.
Our tin classroom takes me by surprise every time we come up on its
two concrete steps, a pile of cheap sandals inside the doorway, to a chorus of,
"Welcome teacher, good morning teacher!"
Moony brown eyes and little, rotten teeth
My tooth fairy income could have fed them for a day.

The train clatters toward the big city past the doorless classroom entrance:
Button down shirted call center professionals, students, sari-clad women all,
leaning out compartment doors, pomegranate scarves twisting in the draft,
numb to slum scent. 
It passes and we resume our lesson on international food and music,
wild galloping to American country and slithers to Australian didgeridoo;
we finish with the Indian national anthem.

We are rock stars leaving the classroom,
slum kids too poor for school wave shyly at the white people in sneakers with sweaty feet.
Two boys play under fruit-laden tables with a stray dog, another goat.
Teenagers glance at us, quizzical,
men double-take with no shame, tobacco spit spraying dusty road.

We leave the line for rice and oil rations,
trays of peas drying in the sun,
crowds of school-aged idle boys playing marbles in the street,
mounds of trash in all directions
for the hill-top town of Matheran.

Rising out of Mumbai smog by a road weaving up the mountain,
finally greenery, the drama of valleys, peaks,
nature that isn't polluted, over-sized ponds bordered by lawless intersections,
beauty in India beyond women's garments--
the nation they sang about.
They likely will never see this, 
maybe not even the urban lakes just outside the toxic nest they know.
Only goats, and garbage.