I remember when my girls were small,
I trained myself never to say their hands
Were soft as flowers. Or that their faces
And smiles and dancing figures brought
To mind roses or lilies or stalks of tall
Rajnigandhas. Not even the thought
Was allowed to enter my heart. A heart
In whose depths lay a memory so wild
-“She was like a flower, my little child” –
A mother whispering of her girl, 2002.
I will never – am never allowed to – forget you.
Tag: Kathua
Arrows To the Heart
I’m three poems behind.
It has become so easy, fun
To see everything in April
As a multitude that holds that one
Poem, a verse, a gem, a find.
Then a poem found me, as
These things will, those words
Insisting on being heard, fierce
Weapons of silence, and now
I can only hear how they pierce
Me to the marrow. In
The multitudes of April, I only see
An arrow.
Unnameable I
Not that many years ago, I wrote
A poem for my daughter who was eight
How she spent hours making paper
Horses. The delicate art of
Origami concentrating her young frame
The wind in their manes a kind of grace.
Today another eight year old face
Asks me how little feet flying
Over hills and grass with a herd
Of horses in her care, are now lying
In a grave seven kilometres away
From a resting place denied her
When the only grace granted her
Was dying.
Giti Chandra 