Three Poems by Geetha Ravichandran

 

Beyond Hashtags 

             

A flute seller

trudges up the road

breathing soft, silken music

that floats into the homes

of those who could buy

all the flutes off him,

for small change.

His old melody

flowing out

of the empty reed,

rises and lingers

in the street air.

In the high rises,

noise-cancelling earphones  

shut out the music.

There’s no Insta feed

to tell this story.

The flute seller’s step is light

even as he dangles

the unsold stack of flutes.

 

Beyond curated stories

there’s a happening life outside—

a subtle medley,

snaking up the streets.

A Pen Sketch

I sketch a narrative
in sharp, clean lines
and then without design
I find myself right there in it,
frizzy hair, toothy smile and all—
I am the habitual photobomb.



I hear a whisper,
erase histories,
let the mind hollow out
like a fishing boat
and the fleeting form
steered by winds
ride the waves.
Cast the net wide.

 

Mourning

I sit on the weeping chair
where termites have bored
deep into the wood
as it sinks in slowly.
A dear family member-
subtracted,
has fallen silent
on WhatsApp group.
So many kind things
are said about her
to compensate
for the cold shoulder
she got in her time.
The friendly cleaning robot
buzzing near me
repeatedly gobbles up
the micro dust on just
one stretch of the floor,
in the midst
of ongoing disintegration.
Mourning is about
letting the dust settle.

Geetha Ravichandran lives and works in Chennai, India. She enjoys writing short articles and poems. The pandemic  has revived her interest in poetry. Over the last year her poems have been published in several online journals including Setu, Borderless, Verse-Virtual, The Literary Nest, Madras Courier, The Pangolin Review.  Her poems have been included in a couple of anthologies published by Hawakal –Hibiscus and Shimmer Spring. One of her poems has also been included in the  Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2020-2021. She has just recently started exploring the joys of Haiku.