This week’s poem, inspired by the impression of familiarity, but also of contrast I received when I was recently in Sri Lanka. After 6 years in Bangladesh, I see other countries through that particular lens of experience.

Women of Sri Lanka

On the Kandy streets, smiling, shopping, hurrying,

I recognize in you my Bengal sisters;

you have thrown off sari, salwar kameez, dupatta,

instead a light blouse, a loose skirt

bright over brown ankles,

slender feet in cheap sandals.

I recognize my Bengali sisters’ figure, face and form,

but stare to see you seated in the driver’s seat,

your confident stride,

long black hair loose or in sensible styles.

Seeing a sister, who overnight

has chosen a more practical life.

Kandy, Sri Lanka 2016

This weeks poem inspired by the many uses of henna in the country and cultures of Bangladesh and the world.

Henna

Everywhere hennaed hair,

young and old and men and girls,

closely cut or luscious curls,

henna here, hennaed hair.

Henna here, hennaed beard,

orange flames on pointy chins,

different shades on different skins,

henna styles in henna worlds

Henna twirls on clapping hands,

hennaed twists on hennaed wrists,

wedding preparations, sacred celebrations,

ancient rites from ancient lands.

Henna paste, fingers dipped,

hennaed nails and finger tips.

On bridal youth or fading hair

henna, henna everywhere.

Dhaka 2015

A poem inspired by memories of coming home to the farm after a week at boarding school.

Homegrown

Quality of Africa’s light

announces late farm afternoon.

Dwindling childhood on lengthening limbs,

early adolescence budding.

Sisters, shoes and socks unruly with pencil cases,

school bags tumbling books, brothers stretching

desk-bent week from youthful backs.

Run barefoot across prickly lawn-

first at the Cape gooseberry bushes,

hurried harvest popping bitter-sweet pips

on my boarding-school starched tongue.

Dhaka 2015

This weeks poem inspired by a visit to Rangamati, and days spent in that interesting town in Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Rangamati

Hiding out-back of a hand-built teashop,

bamboo over lake Kaptai,

strong sweet chai,

seeping smoke,

skinny chicken picks round my toes,

skinny boy grins and stirs reflected light into my tea.

No one can see my difference here –

ask impossible questions like where I’m from,

but I can watch their loud, crowded lives

chattering past on bright paths

and feel happy and sad inside,

in shade,

in a bamboo teashop.

Rangamati 2016

This week’s poem, inspired by a longing for more truth in the world, more openness and honesty.

Echo

Tentative tapping
on the walls of their souls.
What’s that hollow sound?

Fill the empty drum
with substance;
food, shopping, noise,
dampen –
deaden the dull sound.

Dhaka 2015

This week’s poem, inspired by Sri Lanka and nature and small green birds, which have been on my mind and in my vision a lot lately. Also a substantial nod to a faintly remembered and recently rediscovered poem by Emily Dickinson call ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’.

Hope

Small green bird fluttering across unfocused vision,
quivering amongst leaves and expectant flowers.
Gleam of tiny feather, fluffing roundly in cool mornings,
sleek as flying, anticipate that thing
with feathers on.
That thing that is nothing; only oxygen to lungs,
sunlight to plants, water to fish,
insignificant as a seed;
a small green bird.

Across unfocused eyes flutters grey-green gleam,
fluffing roundly in cool air, sleekly flying.
That thing with feathers on,
nothing but oxygen, sunlight, water,
a seed;
a small green bird

Flutter of green gleam, fluffing roundly, sleekly flying,
that thing with feathers on.
Oxygen, sunlight, water, seed;
small green bird

That thing with feathers on,
a small green bird

Sri Lanka 2016

This week’s poem, at the end of a gloomy month is about hope and light, and seeing the beauty and inspiration in the smallest things that unobtrusively come our way.

Glimmer

small green bird

in grey gloom

does remarkable things

Dhaka 2016

This weeks poem inspired by the wonderful works on display at Dhaka Art Summit 2016.

Dhaka arts 16

Blue, all blues, my favorite colour. Girls matching scarves, black-lined eyes stand out in bright faces standing out against blue.
Bamboo armour sculptures, bamboo armoured women march in matching bamboo armour helmets, each unit unique, each woman so similar, the same face, identical, identical to the woman watching at the dark curtain watching-me-watching-her in multiples marching.
White squares with grey shadows reflect the outside inside upside down, I want to sit on them, walk between them, but we’re told to move on, casting longing glances behind at symmetrical temptation.
Struggling with a red tower where his head should be we walk uncomfortably close to an almost bare, dark-skinned, man and hurry past ashamed of those staring at his struggle.
Move nervously with acrid smell of sweat burning the image of oversized sports shirts stretched on frames into our noses.
Lovely female forms dancing on steaming mountains of rubbish, while the city looking pretty in evening sunlight beyond the dump.
Near the VIP lounge a parody on VIPs where ordinary citizens make room, keep distance from the three letters on a cardboard sign, reserving space for their own relative insignificance to be firmly rubbed in.
Is it a dirty urine stain, amber with ancient insects, honey with drowned ants bringing out the colour, the eternity, in fading images?

Clapping hands, shuffling books – lines that form, flow, shift, join – garment workers gazing up and ahead through silly glasses too real to be true – people, people against red background, pigeons lining up to pose white and grey against red – architectural models to perfect and precise for traffic dusk, monsoon mould, people to occupy the crevices – photographed meals, toilets, buses, cars, days, days shared to save CIA trouble of tracking and spying, “is this red curry a terrorist activity?” – drenched hair and faces emerging from the black-stinking water of the Buriganga river as they have always done – colourful faces of marriage markets searching suitable partner for gays son, I’m ugly I hate myself, 30,000 per month and religious – drug addicts face painfully close – hairy legs intertwined – giant, plastic-looking human animated ear – clear clean lines that sum up ‘fish’ ‘tree’ ‘logic’ ‘history’ – a donkey falling down dead after grazing cheerfully, relief in the word ‘anesthetize’ – stepping gingerly around that not-quite human, not-quite-animal, hairy dead creature lying uncomfortably between two halls –
faces, ‘satiated’ ‘satisfied’, ‘shocked’, ‘relieved’,
refreshed, exhausted I never made it to the third floor but head down to reality, so much less intense than this Art.

Dhaka 2016

This week’s poem about truth, something which we seem not to be getting enough of.

Truth

Birds against blue

light-sliced spaces, where silence rings through

in overlap, waves slap against shore

unseen, in between the drum beat,

the quiet closing door.

Where words are few, but fresh, new,

saying something never heard before,

or something often said

naked at its core.

Dhaka 2015

This week’s poem inspired by the Association for the appreciation of January shares ideas for everyday inspiration – especially in January.

Especially January

Everyday has its inspiration –
Waking early and going out for a walk, a run or watering pot plants on the rooftop
Trying to catch dawn some days, hearing birds wake, seeing bats settling upside down for a day’s rest
Passing by favorite places – shady corner in a park, a flower garden, an intricate fig-tree, where crows meet to argue, where new leaves are breaking free
Waking your skin with cold water at the end of a hot shower, pulling your hair to get blood to your brain
Watchful for moments to capture, to photograph, offer as poems, as stories or just to store as memories
Taking exercise as a reward – swimming underwater, walking amongst old trees, dancing to deafening music, jogging in slightly scary places
Cooking for people who love food and eating it with them
Exercising and stretching everyday
Inviting art into your life – visiting galleries and buying paintings, reading poems and brilliant books, reading old favorites again and again, listening to music that moves you
Spending earnings on experience with people you love and not bothering too much about stuff
Meditating on nothing – or on good things – lists of those who people your life, interesting places, rivers you’ve swam in, trees you’ve rested under
Being brave enough to push on, not stopping when your heart starts to pound
Celebrating every day and every months while it’s there –
Especially January

Dhaka 2016