My everyday dawn song

When I pick the vathu sudda I pause and meditate
it is the time for pick-leave,
what to keep and what to take
who to take away and who to let be
breaks to break
and so I get
from the nondescript vathu sudda
the contours of our human solitude
the loneliness in crowd
the self-containment
and the perishability
of all things:
Puppham milāyāti yathā idam me
Kāyo tathā yāti vināsa-bhavam.*

*Just as these flowers fade, so too will our bodies be subjected to decay.


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Moon thoughts

Twice framed:
The beeralu of the bedroom
and the lunumidella
in its singularity
of branch composition;
twice framed
and once blurred
in the scattering of clouds,
the part moon was orange last night
and fell in bits and pieces
through foliage and carpentry-curve.
Stepping out the poetic orange dropped
in different shape and size
through mango and kohomba
and cloud-blur,
and I
eager recipient and light reader
wondered:
what patterned and coloured comforts
fell on or bypassed
an inmate and a soldier,
bylaws and leniency
those easy to get to
but hard to change places
of our collective infirmities,
but moon fell like rain
and rained and rained
unburdening the sorrows
of our human infirmities.

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Ode to punctuation

And she came in the dawn light
like the many times revisited
first page
of a one-page story
ending with the three dots of longing
and hope
and there she stayed for a while
and kissed away
to puncture dream
with the blessed punctuation
of two kisses
leaving the timeless life-ending mark
of love
.

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A candle-wick song

Protector and victim
lit and then forgotten
and framed in light.
lover of flame
collector of devotion’s inevitable residue
let me name you now:
you are carpenter without stool
cultivator who goes hungry
writer robbed of words
mechanic without a car
voter without representation
a memory erased from the hard disk of surviving,
property-less householder
whose burning is celebrated
with hand-clasp and prayer
disposable and disposed thread
propped by the perishable
and yet alas
survivor,
how much like us
in this sansara.

[Inspired by the photography of Hiranya Malwatta]

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Podi Haamuduruwo

Child, yes
and child enough
for boyishness
with spring and chuckle
but coyness too
in the framing of robe
the vinaya rules
and the larger dictates:
the paramitas
the karmic power
the choice and choice-lack
the producers perhaps
of this here and this now
of this childhood’s ordained colours
of reflection and reflexivity.

[inspired by the photography of Rukshan Abeywansa]

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