Short poems about a moment or an object
Mom puts down her book,
To say it is there, not there.
Mom swings way up to sky
Her reading lodged in sky.
It may be there in that sky.
The snail started a journey
Near mom’s swing to a sky.
A snail may be there or not.
Mom is not there but I am.
The snail may not be there.
Her balloons are cat-headed
And blue-fished ,oval-shaped,
Animal souls drifting in room
Only to pop from boy’s hand.
We would leave a peacock’s
Morning cry for my evening,
Its colored tail danced away.
They were only 123 of them.
We would collect red shreds
And all our peacock feathers
After they had the souls left.
Their dance was for a cloud.
The clouds would drift away
And our balloons would pop.
There are not many feathers,
Only dead furniture in room.
(Reading Balloons , one of the last poems of Sylvia Plath before her suicide in 1963)
The dead have blurbs of tales.
They’ll return on reverse feet
To get your pure white back.
You can ram one only once.
Mom is at dog’s eye-level
Dog has it in her old eyes,
Mom smiling down at her.
Dog has lump on her side.
We have lumps in throats.
Dog has mom at eye level.
After dam it is a temple and pilgrims,
Ancient memories of the after-world.
A snake turns into many small snakes
And boats heave only high on people.
Island is holiday from river touched
By a wind and boats bringing motion
For people to nest in shadow houses,
Copies of concrete holes back home.
(On a visit to the Bhavani island resort in the Krishna river near Vijayawada)
We make do with a night
When we take light sleep
And enact small dreams.
We make do with eyelids
Not opening to our night.
They make do with light.
We make do with the day
And night when it closes
And there is another day.
Some passing cars have sneezed
Grease bubbles in rain puddles.
Feet in rolled trousers take care
Not to tread on pretty rainbows.
As you walk, trousers rolled up,
Step on the stones and hop skip
As stones shake with indecision
And let the swirls be your guide .
