Henpecked

They know a farm boy when they see one.

The roosters eyed him from their perches while

Their womenfolk stepped daintily out from

Among the birches, planting each three-toed

Foot delicately before the other, and one

After another slantwise bestowed our man

Suggestive glances. Meanwhile a designated

Veteran advances. It isn’t obvious at first but she’s

Clearly taking no chances. Murder most fowl

Is on her mind. The city bred wife is not

Of their kind. It’s time she goes. She comes

For my toes. Her malicious eye fixes

On my feet. She’s not giving up till I’m in

Full-blown retreat. And you know what,

Ladies? It’s fine if you want to fight

For your men. But my advice, if you’re caught

In this Shakespearean scenario: remember

The most famous stage direction of that

Impresario: Exit pursued by hen.

love poem

It has been three summers

and as many seasons 

of writing of you. 

With each I have watched my love change. 

From grief to longing 

to an uncertain pastness.

Perhaps this year will be the last.

A quiet ending

for a quiet love. 

I cannot promise this 

any more than I can tell you

how many poems you must write

before there is nothing left to say.

Aubade

Dawn comes earlier every day

earth now tilting sunward

by 23.3 degrees. Each ray

formed at our star's core a hundred

thousand years ago, ricochets

to the surface, light-speeds through

space to earth, to fill this holy day

with old light, sky that ancient blue

Titian used just for Mary's robe

lapis ground to dust. After that long night

at dawn they found the empty tomb

He said 'I have come into the world as light.

BATS AND BUTTERFLIES

I was friendless for a long time.

Holed up in an empty house.

Head down over a discoloured plastic-cased PC monitor.

Phone calls ceased. Songs lammed my jammed throat.

You could label no-decibel, a quiet life.

Except, that quietude had no peace in it.

Only a zillion pieces of decaying sadness.

I was in hiding. From the world. From myself.

Friendship was a possession for happy people.

The ones who celebrated inebriated.

The ones who danced even after the music stopped.

The ones who got hitched and got others hitched.

Notice how they say all is fair in love and war?

Because nothing's fair in heartbreak and defeat.

Only bats and plaster-peeling terrace walls stay with you.

Your echo. Your location. Fixed. Unchanging.

In my middle age, the hesitant river of my youth

coursed back into its bouncy childhood.

I found friends like a tree does new birds. 

The bats became butterflies.

My feet found their springs, rusty yet working.

Still flexing. Still releasing.

Across terrace maps, laughter rolled into echoes without decibel limits.

I was friendless once.

Now I'm gloriously friendful.

And all that (for Supurna)

In that general direction

is all kinds of aches and pains.

Some to pick up from 

and keep going 

blindsided by others 

that bring traffic to a standstill. 

This, and all that 

from a bit up ahead on the road. 

Eyes on the rearview mirror. 

After a while it helps to know 

how far along we've come.

Even though it can’t be told 

how much more’s to go. 

Windblown as leaf

feet are

searching stable ground

 

limbs reaching for

fixed walls

 

body seeking 

a secure casing

held in one place of mind.

That's what friends are for

 

The photograph I’m taking probably hasn’t survived
At any rate, I can’t tell which of the many
I took of Pennsylvania countryside
It is. You took this picture of me, though,
And here I stand for all eternity - having
Hoisted myself onto the bonnet of
Your econovan (‘bonnet!’ I hear the
Snort still) to get a better shot. And so,
This me survives, as some mes will,
Through your eyes. I think now, that
You didn’t say ‘wear something nice’ or
‘Where’s that lipstick?’ Your dad took us
To the pow-wow, fed us buffalo stew, and
Of all the pictures of my many lives, this
Is the one I’d pick if I was ever in danger
Of feeling less than me. This dressed
In baggies, standing on a car, no-style
Haired, rolled-up sleeved, focusing afar,
Person only you could see.

summer flowers

Mid april and the trees

awaken for the summer.

By the side of the highway 

the sudden gold of a Copper Pod

its boughs heavy with life

its blooms dusting the cars below.

Every corner of this city 

now bears some undeserved loveliness.

By the public toilets

the cascade of Laburnum.

Over the construction site 

the soft hand of the Jacaranda. 

Arriving overnight

the flowers make of these streets

new landmarks, new vantage points.

So that craning your head upwards

on your daily commute 

you can say

my god 

I didn’t know

just how much beauty belonged to us.

QUTAB MINAR, 1963

 

What is love without 

secret grooves and a

relish for scandal?

Even a minaret

competing with the

heavens in stature

and height must

succumb to two lovers

hunting for cover.

The sandstone's

smooth finish is still

intact. Never mind the

ill-fitted religious

inscriptions along

the walls -- like a

lover's heels over

head heart, a bee

that works best when

disoriented. In his

black coat, a man

flips his hat and

woos his lady along

the minaret's spiral

whorls. Love scales

the highest of heights,

desire plumbs the

deepest of depths.

A lone sigh measures both.

In her white scarf,

the lady plays hard

to get. A fleeting,

fleeing butterfly,

sticking to a dark

corner now, sprinting

down a stair then,

testing love's tenacity,

its ambition to inscribe

its name onto a tall, cold,

stony monument once

built to stamp triumph.

Earth Stories - 1

Meeting old friends this morning
I was showered with gifts.
Seeds, leaves, whole seed pods
and a poem just fell into my lap.
I was hugged and heard.
Secrets were told, now sealed
into the earth in my heart.
Meeting old friends this morning
I heard her speak out clear that
my most precious time is here
with her. 

 

Tears

Holes in the heels of my socks were mended

with needle and yarn. The cracked worn sole

of my good shoes was cobbled. The blue bowl

in pieces, was glued, and used as intended

but this rift between friends who were once close,

who talked every day and even wrote letters

read each other's work, wore each other's sweaters

It's like trying to reattach the petals of a rose

This tear won't be repaired

even by tears 

Maybe by years. 

EVENING ALCHEMY

Some evenings arrive early but 

stay on. Like a glass of water, 

they start ordinarily but in no time 

alchemize into a cocktail. Of spicy 

conversations, zesty guffaws 

and uncensored evensong.

small bird

Mid afternoon

the sky is stretched wide

over a drowsy city.

I lie on my back 

watching the light shift.

Somewhere a small bird

is singing in the sun.

 

Do you still sing?

Do you still sing?

In the question, there’s a knowing
that life could get in the way of
something like that – to sing, after all is
“just” an extracurricular, a perk, a hobby.
No one asks, for instance – do you still eat?
Do you still breathe? Do you still sleep?  

But they do ask – and often: 
Do you still paint? Do you still dance?
Do you still write? Do you still read?
Do you still sketch? Do you still trek?
Do you still knit? Do you still carve?
Do you still bake? Do you still joke?
Do you still play – the violin or guitar?

Do you still stretch your palms out to the sky
when rain drops kiss them and do you still sigh?
Do you still laugh for no reason with people
who get that laughter needs no reason?

Do you still sing could also echo
Why be joyful when you can be useful?
Why just be when you can become?

Do you still ____ ____ ____, my friend?
Go now and fill in the blanks. 

Underbelly

Lying down on a stone bench
under the trees this morning
I saw tiny insects keeping busy
with whatever they do daily.  
There was a spider letting forth
silken threads, tying up leaves
in clusters – leaves already torn
ridden with holes, some dangling
free even in the face of threats to
freedom. A tiny shell of what might
have been an insect hung loose – a
brownish red husk catching the sun
streaming from above and suddenly
when the sun shifted – all action moved
backstage and all I could see were leaves
in more shades of green than I could count. 

LANGUAGE LEARNING

The way to the park is your

lesson in learning a new

language -- the non-verbal.

First, there's incessant

cawing, a warning siren for

the murder fellowship as a

kite, alert, determined,

sweeps over the skies before

settling on a top branch of

its nest tree. The cawing

subsides. The breeze quickens.

Down the street where houses

boast family names in bold

steel casing, languorous dogs

sleep in. Being calendar, and 

pedigree, free is its own divine lot. 

A few steps into the park, bang

boom, thump -- a break in 

reverie. Turning to see what

fell/broke/collapsed, only to

find simian calisthenics on

and off tree branches. Further

along the paved walkway, a

feline friend? frenemy? squints

to question the sun's zeal.

This hour of quiet (mostly)

language learning at the park

may be tough to master, 

but not hard to get behind. 

Insomnia

Sometimes, lying awake watching the hands

of the clock mark time's inexorable creep

knowing it is not mine  to command

I  flail, flounder, not quite falling. Sleep 

won't come by calling. No one can climb

to it, can't strive or strain, that only drives

it away. But in attempting to rhyme

- knives, archives, desperate housewives -

poem and dream both drown in the well

into which I wake up to find I fell

taking action

Hope resides in the

doing of things. 

It does not matter

that my body does not look

like I want it to

if my legs ache

with the memory of exertion.

Just as it does not matter

that I have failed 

once again

if I am already stretching my arms

towards the glimmer

of something new. 

So little of my life is of my 

own making

that I may be forgiven 

for dwelling in the promise

of taking action. 

If I cast my net 

over and over

I need not pause

to see

what I have pulled in.

For my long lost friends

You still appear in my dreams some times.
In some, we’re friends again – saving
each other’s lives in ways that no one can see
and if they could, wouldn’t understand
and in some you are a stranger I meet on a bus
to a small town whose name I cannot remember
even in the dream. You sit next to me, we speak
about the way the mountains have moved us
inside out, while the bus climbs up the mountain
and when we reach the top – we step off the bus
taking two different directions to the little town
forgetting to exchange phone numbers.
You still appear in my dreams some times.
And in some, we’re friends again. 

SHADOWS

The true secret of shadows

is in the mysteries  it unriddles. 

The shadow of a stick in Alexandria 

and Syene told Eratosthenes the 

precise length of the earth's curve.

Walking towards shade on a

sweltering June day you learn

how a tree achieves completeness

only when it marries its shadow 

and welcomes parched souls

in its groovy, bucolic shade.

The way our shadow lives with,

accompanies us everywhere, the

way it elongates and shrinks

with the sun's changing address

in space, is also perhaps a key. 

 

To know length is only an illusion.

Dusk

Like spilt champagne the pink light
Soaks into the edges of clouds
Slowly bringing colour to the pristine
White and eggshell down. As birds
To trees the blues darken the skies
Unmindful of brick and mortar
Tumbling in waves, of hands
Reaching to lift free, of lovers
Patiently waiting for love freely,
Guiltily, helplessly. There is no
Sun, there is only intoxication,
Gentle, mad, before night like
A still pool catches our desire
And in its fathomless pity tosses
Us into points of light to glitter
The city.

seeing signs

Today

looking up at the pale dusk sky

I see a flock of cranes

come from nowhere 

and gone 

before I can dredge up

the memory

of when I saw them last. 

Making portents of birds

is an ancient habit.

In another country 

in a different life

the sky would fill with bats

as evening neared

and I had to learn to see them 

not as warning 

but as fact

like tides 

like the coming of night. 

For the zoroastrians

who return to air 

after death 

a birdless sky is a karmic loss.

The absence of the omen

an omen still. 

If I too

may find meaning

in the birds

perhaps the cranes are

a sign of better things

Sudden lightness.

Unforeseen joy.

Things that know when to leave

and when to arrive.