The Mouth of Mid-Morning – Rajani Radhakrishnan

Hope lay deep that summer like water we drew from the

well, sloshing into a strange sun, accosted by the yellow light,

as children laughed, shooting down mangoes, a few, a dozen,

running, fruit stuffed inside their shirts, knocking down a bucket

that had just begun to feel an odd warmth on its cheek. And your

mother, hands on hips, cursing and yelling, her hands like

squawking crows redrawing shadows as she moved, while you

frowned, still on the charpoy, writing, your pen scratchy against

the empty page, like the blanket of stars we shared each night, my

skin burnt in patterns by their silver heat. I read later, much later,

after you had gone, the poems you wrote – about water ebbing in

a faraway sea, water still tasting of dark wells and unnamed hope,

water that was not wet enough, poems about the sound of laughter

that hopped barefoot, its footprints drying before its echo, the

taste of silence metallic in the mouth of mid-morning; poems

about a sun burning like a fever that wouldn’t break, shadows

that grew wings, poems about poems shaped like falling stars

that a girl shaped like a poem would one day, perchance, read.

Rajani Radhakrishnan is from Bangalore, India.  Finding time and renewed enthusiasm for poetry after a long career in Financial Applications, she blogs at thotpurge.wordpress.com . Her poems have recently appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Abridged and The Quiet Letter.