Three Poems by Amrita Sharma

 

Skies

 

In singularities of space and ground,

In canary hues and crimson tinge,

Our skies appear so strange at times.

 

Those that shade those trembling fears,

And those that cover the bare bodied men,

They appear with streams of floating dust,

Out of which each was born and raised,

Before and after the million steps.

Our skies seem dense with unclear trails,

They attempt to struggle to hold out the sun,

Ablaze at times with gleaning streams,

To revert our follies and break the moulds,

Or cast afresh a new timeline.

 

I never looked up so often before,

I never felt the need to stare at the sky,

But something taught me to value the blues,

For its not the ocean that transliterates our tears,

But it is born out of a clear lit sky.

 

Each day I count the leaves on that tree,

But each time I stop before the last one,

I leave it for the day grey clouds appear,

For I know it won’t rain each time I am out,

While we walk carefree under the stormy skies.

 

Since last year I often get up at nights,

Or look up each morning before the sunrise,

And the skies appear more strange to me each time.

 

 

 

Dreams

 

Each time I close my eyes and dare to sleep,

I see those dreams that haunt my days,

I see the dead that walk around,

Crying in pain and screaming out loud,

I try to call back with a silenced voice.

I see a road beside a lake,

Where I am running across to reach some place,

Unsure I keep circling around,

And none appear upon the crowded scene.

At times I see the flowery pots,

That I water each day,

They turn to tall Eucalyptus trees,

That I never planted in my yard.

I see a child in a fancy cradle,

And I see myself calling out to his mom,

She appears nowhere and I see the child,

Left alone with only me around,

And I abandon him as the cradle falls.

I wake up each time with a tear,

And the dreams continue to haunt.

 

 

 

Green Flowers

 

When I touch the ice below his feet,

Upon a desolate ground that is yet to heel.

I tread those scars and an image appears,

I fetch a colour each time to paint,

Or attempt to overwrite upon the blank cards,

There is no outline to fill or refill.

My favourite colour these days is the same,

As the one upon which I wrote your name,

But I often forget the colour as I paint,

But I shall gift you a flower the day we meet,

Of the same colour as that,

But I wonder where would I find a green flower?

Amrita Sharma is a Lucknow based writer currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English from the University of Lucknow. Her works have previously been published in Earth, Fire, Water, Wind: An Anthology of Poems, Café Dissensus Everyday, AWS E-zine, Literary Yard, Trouvaille Review, Confluence: South Asian Perspectives, Women’s Web, Borderless, , Tell Me Your Story, Muse India, Rhetorica Quarterly, GNOSIS, Dialogue, The Criterion, Episteme and Ashvamegh. Her area of research includes avant-garde poetics and innovative writings in the cyber space.