Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 4, Number 2. November 2021. ISSN: 2581-7094
An Invocation
--- Neera Kashyap
I clear the clutter off
my desk.
Papers, notepads,
jottings picaresque.
Bookshelves beckon,
spines speak.
It’s not the time for
envy’s peak.
I see a moonbeam light
up a spine.
The title throbs like a
neon sign.
My hand reaches for the
throbbing light.
It skips a beat and
winks out of sight.
Oh moon, come to this
blue screen.
Here fish swim in waves
of aquamarine.
Leave the tree that
forks your heart in two.
Shine on this screen of
deep earnest blue.
Dark cloud and moon
play hide and seek.
Dark casts a gloom, the
fish no longer speak.
Eyes droop in sticky
listlessness.
Know, accept the moon’s
forgetfulness.
Eyes close, yield to
deep sleep.
Dreamless as the ocean
deep.
Eyes open softly to a
shapeless dark.
The screen is lit by
one moonbeam spark.
An offering
--- Neera Kashyap
No inspiration -
this stray thought,
this line in a book, this
casual remark, this
quote, this memoir excerpt.
More like a hairy kiwi
that hints of a green heart;
a hanging fruit that
drives, propels me to play my part
in a drama of fantasy,
ambition, aspiration, need.
Rough fragment stuck in
a tooth, hard to pry out.
Green heart obscured in
a shroud of anxiety.
Is this where the Muse
will come?
Unlikely.
Sheer propulsion yields
the first reluctant line.
From a spider’s self a
single thread spools out
a web that glimmers in
dread corners of the mind:
memory, insights,
images, emotions, dreams
spool out in threads
from a single focal point.
The poem’s gossamer
heart trembles in its weave.
If the Muse deigns to
come, the patterns change:
threads of woven glass
are shaken up to fall
in a kaleidoscope of
patterns all their own.
Fantasy, ambition,
aspiration, need all burn
in an alchemy that
makes unknown fires known.
For the reader to
experience as her own.