Mitsi and Dayadi

First there were no words

and I didn’t understand;

then there were some and there was clarity

later still, we could talk

baby words turned into child-word

and some big-words tried out

with hesitation, then confidence

some worked, some made me smile

and through this ancient ritual of languaging

in the silences of growing taller

in the expansion of vocabulary

and in my growing incapacitation

I’ve held you both

together and separately

in wakeful hours and while asleep

in the ignorance of parenting

and the knowing of love

with fear, with pride

and as soft as my uncraftable heart licensed

whispering all the time:

‘grow, my precious,

grow, grow and grow

more tender than your cheek

softer than your whisper

into adult and child

and child again

and again.

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Lamping

And the entire universe

its barbed mysteries

faint-lighted in the nutshelling

of human error and eye-limit

is mover and moved

in those faraways of wonderment

and whispered incoherence

so lucid to heart that is heart-twin

floats in dreamskies, settles on thorn-tip

and lights with each blink

a lamp

to recreate the lost universe of fairy tale delight

and the more earthly illumination

that with flame bends fire to sufferable sparks.  

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Picturepostcarding*

From nowhere to nowhere

and to everywhere too

a 360 degree swirl

makes an island

a collage-land

painter-perfected

by a craft called living

and artisans that live

not incredulous of mystery

but clothed

in the knowing of indeterminateness

the vagueness left un-probed

and therefore free

to undress

in the truancy of time

picture-post-carding

for those with singular lens

and soft fingertip.

*inspired by the photography of Hiranya Malwatta


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Reed songs

Reed songs are for certain dawns

where guards step out of guardstone

and flowers un-garland and return home

Reed songs slip by riverbed and mourning

percussion with pebble and debris

the brittle wood of forgettable years

and the discord of love’s wrecked seasons

burn and burnout and cool;

reed songs turn heart-rock into sand

squeeze out love-residue from songless vacancies

and those heart drops turn

neglect into whisper into rainbow-trace

and

sometimes

colours whose names are known.

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Time-twist

You were a memory and a name

an ember that resisted ashing

a come-go thing that touched and went

and your eyes

when they arrived

were not they eyes I saw

or maybe they were,

no matter,

for you are not memory

and not name either,

but a singular gaze

on a random night

that saw

that touched

and stayed.

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Kaak-Art

Scavenger

eye-sore

bad-news at the door step

identifier of squalor

and discard;

sentinel and purifier,

an unsatiable city’s

unsung remnant-picker

for you

there is no suitable perch

in Shoo-Shoo Land

and none where tenurial right

will not be claimed.

[Inspred by the photography of Natalie Soyza]

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Hasadri*

she is every child
who kept sun and moon
mom and dad
in free float and fall
from fall and stray
with fingertipped love
and the indescribable innocence
of wordless knowing.

*My beautiful and considerate niece

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