This week’s poem inspired by a moment in the hectic Gulshan traffic and an oportunisitic rickshaw walla.
Turning right
Vibrating moment where vans,
cars, buses pause – poised on the cusp,
leg muscles tense for the big pedal push,
beggars step back before the forward rush,
policeman draws breath, raises whistle to lips,
crow caws in sudden calm
rickshaw walla tramps down
and we sail illegal, exuberant through the eye of the storm.
Dhaka 2014
I’m happy and a little proud to note the second anniversary of Rilla’s Poems, with the continuation of weekly poems, small but regular innovations in presentation and an ever growing number of visitors.
Thank you to my regular readers and those others who pop in from the wondrous world of cyberspace.
Awake for light’s break,
drifting fog, cawing crows,
turning point’s golden glow.
Dhaka
21 December 2014
Having failed to write a fresh poem this week – despite considerable adventures and excitement I have decided to share one I found earlier…
Innocence
This poem that I found, sitting damp on the ground,
shall I love her and give her a home?
Give her gifts of sweet chimes, clothes of adverbs and rhymes,
so she claps her slim fingers in glee?
Shall I coach her in dance with steps that repeat,
lift her chin, shape her hands, time her feet?
Teach her manners and style, so she’ll be a good child
who smiles at the strangers she meets?
Or shall I let her run free – full of fun, full of grace,
let the wind and the sun kiss her face?
I could teach her to pray or to sing – or to say
the first thing that comes into her mind.
She’s a lover of nature, a sensitive creature,
a child, but mature for her years.
Watching me now with eyes that ask how
much I love her,
how I’ll shape her,
who she’ll be.
Dhaka 2014
(previously published in Writers Abroad Magazine)
This week’s poem on finding inspiration in our best selves.
Again
Starting, she was on the edge,
wind from below,
alert, lean, sharp.
Her rapid pulse drummed tempo.
Acute angled collar bones,
shadowed hollows, gleaming curves.
Later she got soft.
Comfortable, complaisant,
laughable love handles, easy habits
set calm pace, set cool mood.
Now, doors have slammed,
there’s a thumping
in her chest.
She’s going back – to the beginning.
Dhaka 2014
My mother,
child of a single mum
during the war.
I never finish
a box of chocolates
in one sitting.
#one-line on-line poet
Dhaka 2014
This week’s poem, a memory of the African lawns of my childhood.
African lawns
Memory, barefoot
across desiccated lawn,
tear-stinging cut of paper-thorn.
Summer’s lush green,
incisive sting of devil-thorn,
plump-faced with horns.
Dhaka 2014
What happened?
I know it only now,
looking back.
Dhaka 2014