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Poetry

Poetry

Cat Poem

April 4, 2024

There’s a woman who lives near me 

Alone in an old apartment.

A little run down, her and her abode.

From the shade of our quiet tree-lined street

I see her dusty balcony during my evening walks

A rickety wicker chair piled high with

a decade’s worth of newspapers.

On slow Sunday mornings

When half our street is still asleep

Her cats luxuriate in the golden sunlight

Streaming through the trees

The dust motes of the balcony 

Of no consequence to them.

 

Every once in a while I see her on the street

To and fro on some errand 

Her clothes unironed,

Her hair an afterthought.

Looking like the smell of a thousand mothballs

In forgotten trunks full of old saris.

 

I have to feed the cats,

she tells me as she shuffles hurriedly away.

And I thought of those cats

Happily sunning themselves

And the woman furtively lurking

in the depths of the old dusty apartment.

 

(NaPoWriMo2024)

 

Poetry

Renew

April 3, 2024

A neem tree grows outside the french windows

In my bedroom.

Casting its shade and bitter fragrance

On to my desk

My books

My belongings

And me.

 

In the scorching summer heat

I wilt a little with the tree

When the leaves wither

And the mournful cawing of the crows

Swirls melancholy over the parched earth.

 

Then the tree comes back to life

The bitter green washing through me again

To renew, restore, rejuvenate  

The neem tree a bright flame of green

Fragrance of life outside my window.

 

(NaPoWriMo 2024)

Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum, Bhopal

At the Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum in Bhopal earlier this year.

 

Poetry

Soft

April 1, 2024

In a paper I read

About the beauty of language

A famous scholar said

About Sanskrit

That it described things perfectly

Such as

Nipal asam

“As softly or silently as the falling of leaves.”

 

It made me think of

Leaves drifting through the softness of time

Like a sigh suspended in the softness of space

It made me think of

The soft cocoon of your heartbeat

A language of beauty

For mine. 

 

(NaPoWriMo 2024)