Five Poems by Kashiana Singh

 

Gaze

 

That audacity

of scrawny legged birds

disappearing
as they slumber

in emptied trees

all wintered branches
parentless, swaying towards
open ended skies

its bluish grey a moaning

mirror to the cemetery below

the solitary birch tree

disrobing itself onto
rows of epitaphs

I turn away my gaze

to listen to the wit wit

of a perched swallow.

 

Transformation

 

crumbling anger -

I see an icicle

melting

 

a caterpillar

dissolves itself -

breaking free

 

water graves –

grief washes ashore

in cockle shells

 

mountain peaks –

just one breast remains

after surgery

 

The birthing scenes of Charles River

 

Imagine the sight of a river

melting outside your window

Thrusting itself out of the cracks

of a hardened dawn

It’s arriving shadows

devour the blue sky of my eyes

Her bosom of crumpled pleats

tender like a mother’s eager breasts

The silver of her urging nectar

flowing towards a keen south

Persistent, a haunting and healing

purging the algae of my ghosts

A season is also pushing

its way out of a ripened vagina

Amniotic waters ready

for it to emerge

A season finding itself

in rustling sounds and rusted tracks

It shrugs away the grey

and dips into your now crowning presence

I notice how the maples form a nursing dome

keeping watch

I also keep watch

on vigil at my window

as an umbilicus uncoils

over quivering stones

Farther away, Eliot’s fog

is carefully unwrapping

episodes of mountains

I crack open a poem

an afterthought

 

Reshaping

I am the coy pebble resisting the sea
the absence of blue inside bald waves
I am the farthest point of this rainbow
the collarbones of the sky untethered
I am mortal remains of immortal past
the crashing sound of purple meteors
I am a morning altar of sunlit temples
the errant disciple now in a samadhi
I am the ephemeral breath unfurled
by lungs refusing to be dead weight

The lingering rain pretends presence
I carefully count its unbroken droplets

 

Flowers of celebration

like jasmine that drinks on its own colour
blooming for the moon to tenderly part
the sky into night and day.

like wild rose, burnished dust petals as
if still breathless from a lover’s delight
of that one miracle glance.

like bougainvillea creeping over stones
asking for more, the ruggedness of the
wall whispering freedom songs.

like tulips swaying in open fields, naked
to the sun and unashamed they beckon
the mind to birth again.

like pansies at windowsills, where songs
tend to the soils of their boxed existence
and bring birds to paradise.

like narcissus in morning light, gleaming
into its own champagne. its time, it’s time
to bring home some pride.

like moon flowers that pour miracles into
nights, flaming tongues of thick flesh spit
prayers into our vibrant eyes

 

 

Kashiana Singh calls herself a work practitioner and embodies the essence of Work as Worship into her everyday. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills from Yavanika Press in 2020 is a journey that unravels memory through 10 cities.