May 11, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
All photographs©Vijaya Sundaram, May 2016
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Generation
Beans to Be
©May 11th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Yesterday, with the sun pouring
Streams of honey on fragrant flowers,
With the bees drunk with it all,
And the birds singing, their
Unfettered joy ringing in trees,
With the rain clouds hiding,
My daughter and I planted beans
In earth rich with humus and manure
Which I’d worked over the
Previous sun-soaked day.
Small, and curved and tender,
Beans slipped into one-inch holes
From our gloved hands.
They lay there, vulnerable,
And we covered them over,
As I sang in my mind,
“Grow, little beans, grow!”
Tenderness filled me,
Such a strange emotion to feel
On that warm spring afternoon!
Named, staked, marked, and watered,
Our beans lie cradled in dark, tasty soil
Full of the green tug of growth,
Ready to bring forth new life.
Generations of beans, pale green
Resembling tiny to-be-beings
Promising food, lie waiting,
Waiting for their turn in the light
With no giant or Jack to break them,
As they await the hot days of summer.
While spring flowers bloom
And bees stagger in drunken stupor
And the dog goes mad with joy,
While I follow them into
Sweet, daydreaming delirium,
Sun-saturated and content,
No emotional surges, no loneliness
No angst or stabs of passion
No confusion or climaxes assail me,
When I think about our beans to be.
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Tags: #Daily Prompt, #Generation, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
May 11, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry
All Those Opossums
©May 11th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
All those opossums
Crossing the road
In cold, cruel North America
Where cars drive by, oblivious,
Callous and uncouth, eating the horizon,
Metal behemoths, graceless and soulless
Carrying fleshy bipeds, intent on pleasure,
Needlessly texting, swilling coffee, eating.
All those opossums,
Slow and sweet
Full of lumpish grace
Full of beautiful tiny-eyed wonder
Full of somnolence and moonlight
Full of love, and need and fear
Full of the urge to get the hell across.
Look! There come a pair of yellow eyes
To blind an opossum’s little bright ones.
Hurry, little opossum!
The moon hides her face.
The moving clouds freeze.
Lilacs bloom in purple grief.
Heedless, the human drives on.
Somewhere, someone will grieve
For you, little opossum.
Somewhere, someone will remember
That you once lived.
And you will live again
Slowly crossing the highway
On a moonlight night,
With the scent of blooming lilacs
Wafting you along your way.
No humans will zoom by
Milky clouds will move gently across
And you will lump across with grace
WIth your six children on your back,
Ruling the roads, and the moon
Will sail you safely home.
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May 11, 2016 Light verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Diverse
Di-verse
©May 10th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
The deadly spectre of duality
Has quite overtaken my halting verse –
‘Twould be far better if plurality
Were awakened to stop it from being terse.
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Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Diverse, #Poetry, #TheDailyPost