I Used To Dislike Eventide

Sun sets the honey hive on fire.
This is still earth, here,
a little more ornate, a shade of bride-fresh.

I cover my mother’s hand with mine,
hers ever tinier, shrinking further,
becoming those of my daughter’s,
still large enough to drown the sky
if held before my eyes.

Gone River

Along a long gone river
rove my memories.

The rhyme of ducks, ashes, ashes,
and the old stone bridge that stays

loyal to those who dare to cross,
say, “You may stand on the devil’s arc

but there will be no shadow
to forge the hole, not in whole.”

Who am I who tour the echo?
Why a revisiting hollows out
spaces hallowed?

A Tale From My Memory

We play memory-game today,
pretend we do not know this place
and form O with our mouths
when we find all the hidden keys and knives.

On A Seismic Scale

I sewed my lids tight against
my rapids of eyes. Earth quivers,
people already pouring into the thoroughfares,
avenues, roads, streets, lanes, alleys behind
your moss and mess. The couch canoes in a vortex.
A falling jar of silence crashes even before
hitting the floor. What are we now? Where are you
when the earth shakes? My friend calls me
to say his mistress doesn’t know what to do with
his body. Bury in a debris? I whisper.

Narrative

He can see her, his wife,
singing in their son’s wedding
and drowning in the pallor of cancer,
him singing to her. The song he
cannot recall is a milestone.
One can move either way.

He can see her, the song.
A woman blinds it with her hands,
soft, whiting away hands.
She says, “Guess the lyrics, dear tune.”

An author, journalist, and father, Kushal Poddar, editor of ‘Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being ‘Postmarked Quarantine’. His works have been translated into eleven languages.