The riotous clamour

Between our silences

nothing

When water bodies breach 

Debris float

And then meander towards the  

already choked manhole;

My debris

needs to be picked:

After my son leaves home..

to the man-my son

Your father found for us

A Pakistani Doctor

in plush London

Who told us plainly

that you were coming..

I knew, it is you

I cannot recall

our first response

Together, we did not know

he knew his and I did mine.

It was overwhelming

Till your ammamma

Told me she hit a lottery

with the gold locket at the Krishna temple

That same morning..

I knew it is you

It is eighteen.

you chose me to

carry you

that he chose to be the partner soul

Our job together done forever and yet

not

Son,

As you become a man:

own every bit of you

the light, the shadows

run from none

Cry for what the heart calls

Laugh when your soul sings

Create when your eyes see

Love all that touches you

and does not - reach out

Your world

is a gift

from two souls

who promised the universe

you

The little pigtailed ones

would shout aunty! aunty!

till I showed up at my verandah

How old are you aunty?

sixteen!

But you have greying hair

no, but my mother also made her hair silver!

Aunty, will this flower become bigger?

Aunty, how many skips can you do without stopping?

Thousand!

How can you do thousand?

With just a click of my fingers

.....

My dear little ones,

I am not sixteen, but my heart is

My flowers don't bloom like a bud once did

But my soul blooms like the crone flowers

My hair - silver for the million moons I prayed to

I can skip through my thousand hurts and fears

my little ones...

One step at a time

sadness

Thought it was you

         The cause for my sadness

Your walking away that is.

         

This evening

With a little poetry

         In the undertones 

It is not you. 

        It is the loss of a time before you.

Of my collection of withered flowers

       Between leaves of sepia pages

The tenderness of my evening dreaminess

      And the radio playing to the stars

In my solitude, and languorous walks

With the mongrels following me

My music and my hidden diaries

My sadness is my loss of myself.

The old hair pin worked on that rusted lock.

The crack

Soaked with my colourless blood

It Refuses

To flow out.

Cannot dry

The marinade soaks the mutton in languorous pleasure
Hiding her from  the heat that will be

As the onion exults in her brown fragrance
Entwined in a polygamous union of
Cinnamon, cloves, fennel and ginger

the thought of how it will be
Or what it will become
Overwhelms.

The slow heat may just tell