Liquid
Mist hangs over the lime green fields
Like a soft crosshatched quilt
A lone crane flaps her
Pearly white wings
Stretches her long legs
Like a ballerina and
Detours to the tarred road.
Has she lost her way?
A black swan dips her beaks
Into the pewter lake waters,
And arches her neck.
Her feathers
Glisten in the
Liquid morning sun.
Memories of past lovers
Stand like scarecrows
In the paddy field.
A red bus tootles
Downhill.
.
Warmth
You don’t feel it when
you are huddled over a carrom board,
trying to drive your coin
home
as friendly banter flies thick and
fast.
You don’t feel it
when you sit beside your husband
and watch the green-plumed bird
the size of your index finger
flit from hibiscus to foxglove
in step with the rising cadence of rain drops.
You don’t feel it
when you rise to fetch
your orange notepad and fountain pen
lying in its cozy corner
on your study table and return
to record a sliver of your dream-life.
The first syllables of a poem
land on the crème paper
nestled on your lap as you sit cross-legged
on the blue plastic chair.
The cold stands sentry,
watching your heart through the layers of
your pink jacket and green shirt.
You keep it safe there
before the laws of thermodynamics act up
and it begins to dissipate.
© Preeth Ganapathy
Preeth Ganapathy‘s writings have appeared before in a number of online magazines, more recently in The Young Ravens Literary Review, Mothers Always Write, Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse and Willawaw Journal. She is also the winner of Wilda Morris’s July 2020 Poetry Challenge. Currently she works as Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax in Bangalore, India.
The Loch Raven Review 