Jul 19, 2018 Original Poetry
How To Become Transparent
©July 19th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Let go of your flesh,
Let go of your bones,
Let your smile remain,
Then, let it fade.
Go back through memory.
Erase pain, erase hurt,
Erase rage, erase joy.
Slide into a pool of water.
Let the water evaporate.
Become a puff of wet air,
Dance with dust-motes in sunlight,
Then, vanish. Poof! You’re done.
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Jul 17, 2018 Original Poetry
Buoy
©July 17th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Somewhere, while fires eat trees
In faraway Sweden, the land
Slides, heavy and unstoppable,
Down a mountainside somewhere in Tibet
Devouring entire houses,
Frightening people and dogs,
Making a vision of the End
Come perilously close to reality.
I sit here, in sunny Medford,
Satiated after a mid-day repast,
Looking at the wind-swayed branches
Of my Japanese maple, and at
The sweet, elegant fronds of ferns
Tossing their heads back and forth,
At the edge of a retaining wall,
Holding together roots and trees.
Somewhere, a father weeps,
A void opening up within him,
As he holds his blank-faced, hurt,
Brown-skinned boy, both forcibly separated
From each other for two months,
While humankind undergoes many
Tectonic shifts, replacing human-kindness
With human-unkindness, and back again.
My daughter rides her bike, and swims,
And laughs, and sings, and delights
In her daily routine at Summer Camp,
Making friends, and learning skills,
While she grows like a young sapling,
Full of sunshine and hope, and joy,
Separated from us for seven weeks,
But secure in our love and reunion.
Happy in my own life, I let in
The sorrows and the devastation of others,
Because I have the space and strength
To do so, but try however I can,
To stem the flood-waters rising
All around me, they are everywhere I look.
And so I bob around, a buoy in the water.
Hoping not to go under, helping to moor.
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Jul 17, 2018 Original Poetry
Impervious
©July 17th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
You stare through her as
She approaches, her gaze level.
Blind to air, you do not see.
She is utterly transparent to you.
She doesn’t exist.
Smiling to yourself, your squirrel-mind
On the next task, on the next person,
On the next conquest inflating you,
You try to walk through her, but stop
Abruptly. Your face hurts.
She is transparent to you, but
She is glass, tempered by time.
Stop.
Stop and look.
You cannot pass through.
See your reflection?
Take a breath, doff your hat,
Make a curtsy, or a bow,
Look at her, or just
Turn around, and leave.
She is glass, and
She is impervious.
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Jul 6, 2018 Original Poetry
Dread
©July 6th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Thunder rumbled like a hungry stomach,
As my dog trembled on the bed,
Curled up beside my outstretched leg,
A fifty-pound package of existential dread.
I pressed my hands against her beating
Chest, whispered calmness into her frame.
The trembling ceased, then returned.
I did it, over and over, whispering love.
Would that someone could do this for me,
Do this for all of us, as our hearts beat faster,
With each day that approaches us.
There was a time, long ago, when days
Stretched like long rubber bands into each other,
But now, they just keep snapping, and
The discreteness of things belie
The connectedness of everything.
To stand on the edge of perception, seeing
Everything, seeing nothing, is to see
Childhood’s express go by like a vision
Within a dream that slips away, even
As I run towards it, willing it to stay.
Open to the skies, I await lightning, hear
Thunder in the distance, and notice
That a flash opened my eyes a long time ago.
Meanwhile, my dog’s trembling lessened,
And ceased, as the rain spent itself,
And the trees released their branches,
And the earth sent up her rain-fragrance.
I assuaged loneliness with coffee and a sweet,
Wasting time, as some inconsequential show
Unfolded its drama on a pixellated screen.
Someone’s probably watching mine, or not.
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Jul 4, 2018 Original Poetry
Afternoon Peace
©July 4th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Hollyhocks shout defiance at the sun
Leaning out like cheerleaders
From their shaded spot, reaching up,
Purple-red and rich with earth-food,
While chocolate-mint leaves cluster
Lustful, profligate, at their feet.
Water from the hose sprays
Down like a benediction in the heat,
And a sigh ripples river-like,
Or like a breeze, through the wanton garden
Green and open with flowers and possibility.
This is where I find peace
And cessation of thought,
A kind of holiness,
A kind of wholeness.
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May 9, 2018 Original Poetry
Grace and Redemption
©May 9th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
The Japanese Maple burns gold,
And shadows fall across the rubble
Of twigs and leaves, and tilted table:
The Fall from Grace of another season.
Graceful fiddlehead ferns arise
Ballerina-like, tender, waving their arms,
Feathery and ethereal from dreams
Of yesteryear, bringing ancient newness
To the rectangular backyard, where the dog
Tramples everything else underfoot
In her eternally failing quest
Of squirrels to subjugate.
Soon, I will head out there with rake and trowel
Lawn bags and mundane accoutrements,
Taming the wilderness just a little.
The Japanese Maple will stand free.
If only all redemption were this easy:
A rake, strong arms, and hard labour,
Restoring order in a chaotic backyard!
No apologies, no regret, no shame –
Just a straightening-up, and a standing-tall
In the face of a new season.
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May 8, 2018 Original Poetry
Empty Gaze
©May 8th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
The shadow of the Japanese maple
On the sunlit wooden fence –
Black shapes against yellow-gold –
Shivers like a memory of other times,
While a squirrel races across.
The sun slants athwart the tree,
Setting it aflame. I sit and look.
I am a living thing with eyes.
There are no thoughts here attending me.
No messages, no epiphanies.
That is all.
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May 6, 2018 Original Poetry
The Birds Never Returned
(A Vision and a Waking Dream)
(A Vision and a Waking Dream)
©May 6th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Five birds unfolded like paper,
From my fingers, as I lay flat,
Palms upraised, staring up.
They fluttered in an updraft, and rose
Translucent and thin, into the still air,
While I lay on the table, and watched.
They wafted lazily above me,
Then rounded into snowy birds,
And flew away, disappearing
Beak by feather, wing by tail-tip.
Pinned down, like Gulliver,
Feeling large and unable to move,
I missed my birds with an ache
Too big to name, a vast hollow
Echoing with loss and need.
But a strange laughter bubbled within,
Rose up through me, and burst
Into the blue air, vanishing like mist,
Leaving me washed clean.
Thin needle-points pinning me down,
Dissolved my boundaries,
Travelled to my nerve-ends,
Sent mysterious messages,
And stayed beneath the radar
Of my inquisitive mind.
I saw music, heard fragrances,
Tasted the quietude in which I lay,
And had no words for company.
I wanted to lie there
In my snowy towel,
in that cool, quiet room,
With nary a person but me –
To lie there forever, making new birds
Which would pick me up,
And carry me away like a babe,
Towel and all, into an unnamed country,
Where I would find them again.
But the birds I had created
Never returned.
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May 1, 2018 Original Poetry
Poetry is A Habit of Mind
©May 1st, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Today, we did crosswords together,
My daughter and I, focused and intent,
While my husband chimed in
From the other room, whence guitar music
Flowed in, and eddied around our ears.
Today, the sun poured down
And awoke a rain-drenched day,
The birds rejoiced loudly.
I saw the dog’s asking look,
Heard children on the playground,
Did this and that necessary thing
As the day wore on, and was
Adrift on a tide of being and doing.
It was not always thus.
Busy-ness dragged me along
Behind its wheels for decades,
And if I wasn’t crushed, it was
Because I adjusted myself as I
Looked around, reminding myself
That there was more to see.
Poetry is a habit of mind,
I use it to shape and translate
The world with the clay of memory.
I rejoice that I have this time.
And when the peace of this flows in,
It spins on the wheel of my making
While I shape it into words –
For I seek a translation always –
Forever a stranger in a strange world.
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Apr 30, 2018 Original Poetry
My last Daily Poem of April. Now, I’ll take a break for a bit from daily poems.
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Out of Here
©April 30th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Rain pours down like complaints
Upon today’s daffodils,
And the dog won’t hear of it.
Nor will I. Yesterday is washed away.
Nap-time seems the only out,
After chores, and mundane matters,
Like the making of lunch. I sleep.
Dreams of wounded animals flood
My mind, and I wake up, panicked,
Fearing for my dog, who, praise be!
Lies at the foot of the bed,
Making sure I won’t float away
And get trapped in sleep forever.
It was that kind of day.
Now night beckons.
I have vacated myself.
I am out of here.
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