Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1. May 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
A Poetic Foursome
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| Image courtesy: istockphoto.com |
1.
How not to weep a river, after a loss
(After
a.b.)
People have just moved on
Knitting yarns, knitting for winter.
The dead no longer haunt them.
“It’s life cycle.” Biology, some say.
The
world has its ways to teach you.
How not to weep a river, after a loss.
A late connect with a left-aside friend who knew me
well
As I knew him, left my calls unanswered.
His body, his young wife responds, never reached
home.
Bundled, like a whopping fish in some fairy tale
cartoon series,
Exotic death – we now talk about.
Ganges too wasn’t spared;
I hear fishes in the river are at the pink of their
health;
They no longer reach the dining dishes.
C’est
la vie
(That’s life)
No one waits outside the door to hear cicada cry.
No
one waits to hear the hill wind sing an elegy.
No one waits to carry the weight of a dead poem.
2.
Kamini
Time to make way.
For silence, for wind, for rivers, for hills
To take over the stage.
From behind the grilled window
As the day burns,
I see the cumulus clouds and the rickety rains
Joining in, choiring, waking up the human-nibbled
earth
Waiting at death’s door.
Man, his shrinking mates stay at home.
Earth with an eye open, stays high on petrichor.
You and I in awe
Watch the Kamini statued. Cheering.
The only suitors – bees keep them
graceful,
Hanging
on as pearl studs on the tree.
The hiatus in the yesteryears,
Now a thing of the past.
Head-packed streets, black smokes from crematoriums
No longer sadden and suffocate us.
That was like another life-like scenes
From
some Netflix docu-series.
We ended up crying
For those up in flames we knew not,
And those we knew without notice kept out
of sight.
We learnt to amuse ourselves, toss a storm,
Tickle the visible next to burst open with
his maudlin moments,
Remembering days before the jailed times.
There is this tree.
There is this tree, every leaf,
My neighbor says is wilting
And the magpie couple have stopped
roosting on it.
I see one-third part of it.
Few yellowing leaves, few over-baked twigs,
On the backdrop of a clear cleaned sky.
There is now a lump in my throat.
A story has a nest in there, unplucked
still –
Watching it grow
From
summer to summer, spring to spring.
“Waiting,”
I remember my grandmother saying,
“Makes us strong.”
I believe her, I believe simple sayings.
Aiming the foot of the tree,
From behind the grilled window as the days
burn,
I let off a handwritten letter.
It’s not late, I suppose –
The prayer for early monsoon begins.
And
there are no rain-whistling winged beings in sight.
Note:
Dwindling population of avian is a worrying sign.
3.
You set free
(After Juno)
I
You came to us – delicate lyric.
No words...just a humming tune
To follow
Too fragile to fill in our hands.
“Wool ball”:
Let that be said of you,
Holding the thumb you crawled up,
like dreams dandelioning an unattended lawn,
wanting to know the world with childlike curiosity.
You took the solitary, sad man
Looking after his degenerating nursery days
Like your brother, at times like your son.
II
You filled in
Our day's conversation,
Our dreams, our nothingness,
our everythingness.
III
One October –
You set free.
Just too soon freeing us
When we didn’t even ask for it.
IV
Dirges
As word wreaths lay upon you.
About the poem:
It
has been difficult to keep aside the memories of Juno. He was just born, found
in an AC duct, nearly breathing his last when my husband found this newly born
squirrel from his office and brought him home. 6 years and a little more, he
became a member. He petted both of us & held us strong at distressing
times. He saw us through lockdown and then one fine day he called it quits. It
isn’t easy writing about him. It isn’t easy to accept, he is no more.
4.
Black is the cue
The neem tree, the chameleon, the doves
and the crows.
You know which the bad omen is.
Black is the cue, superstition smudged.
The wrinkled laid there dark on his bed,
The crow a constant company, by the window.
A comrade in pain, waiting for a formal dinner.
Watchful with his burnished black eyes.
Those eyes – the eyes of the guardian of
under-earth.
Yama leads.
Remedy, the old say is in shut eyes.
About the poem:
Unfortunately,
many cultures see crows as death indicators, bad omen too. Though we are unfair
to the Corvids, many a times especially after death during certain rites we
literally wait for crows to accept our offerings.