Dec 25, 2018 Original Poetry
Sentinel
©December 25th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Golden Christmas lights at the window
Hold a little spark of the sun,
Ward off the widening gulf
Of shadows and darkness without.
In the other room, my beloved
Plays arpeggiated patterns on his guitar,
And the soothing hum of the drier
Accompanies it, like a purring cat
Curled up in front of a bright fire.
Beneath my table, her breathing quiet,
Our dog sleeps, content with her life,
Knowing we are all home, fed, happy.
The Christmas tree is bright,
Lit from within, and holding memories
And little treasures we collected
For, and with our daughter,
Who delights in this season,
And brings us delight.
A fruit tart awaits, and sweet music
Singing together, playing guitars,
We write out the story of our daily lives.
This singing, our punctuation mark,
Completes each day, give clarity.
I have no great ambition, these days.
I am content. What that means,
I cannot tell, but I am content.
Is contentment a sense of balance,
And if so, can any balance last?
When there are weights added
To one side, or the other,
I shall inch forward on the balance,
Or move back, or sit in the middle.
I will make it hold steady,
As I’d hold a cup of water steady
When climbing steep flight of stairs.
And when things come crashing down,
As they surely must, and do,
I will find a way to even out the weights
On either side, and get on.
I seek nothing, even as I seek something.
In this contradiction, standing tall,
Steady as a sentinel,
Right at the middle,
Stands Truth.
__________________________________________
Dec 18, 2018 Original Poetry
Eye
©December 17th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
I’m in the eye of the storm
Raging all around me.
I am calm, quiet, eerie, still.
The storm rages like a banshee,
The sea vaults high over all.
The ship keels dangerously over,
The sea birds are gone.
The sky looks down through a space,
And stars shine bright up there.
And I am that space, all the way down.
All around me life rages.
I sit at the centre, waiting.
There is only loneliness.
Solitude at the beginning,
Meets solitude at the end.
I want to hurry it up, but one
Cannot hurry up the passage
Between birth and death.
I am that passage,
And I am so very tired.
Once the storm abates,
New life will emerge, squalling.
And my passage will be
Of a different kind, but I have
No idea what that will be.
Can emptiness make itself
Into a shape, become a form?
Or will a shape create a new
Emptiness, become a space?
The storm rages on. I become its eye.
_________________________________________
Dec 17, 2018 Original Poetry
Still
©December 16th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Family is a shifting thing:
From blood to blood-type,
From familial to familiar,
From siblings to friends,
From parents to mentors.
Fall into family after family,
Spiral through story after story.
Find a language and a tribe,
Feel the world expand a little,
Just under your rib-cage.
Strangeness answers strangeness
Unease answers unease,
Ease answers ease and unease.
Find that still point within. Now,
Draw your circle with your compass,
Move from point to point,
And still stay in that centre.
While all around you, so do all.
So many concentrics around you,
And so many tangents!
There’s joy in the geometry of meeting
And greeting, circling, retreating – all
So fleeting, yet so constant –
This change and flux – but always,
Always, let your still point stay still.
_______________________________________________
Dec 15, 2018 Original Poetry
Dream-Catcher at My Window
©December 15th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
In the radiating strands of a web,
My Dream-Catcher sits, and waits,
All her dreams have flown away.
The web hangs, empty.
When bad dreams come,
I will call to them with soft tones,
Cradle them in my mind,
Remind them of their delicate wings,
Then, let them fly away.
They are not for keeping.
And good dreams?
They turn into me, or you,
Radiating outward to the edges,
As they arrive through the open center
Through which everything is born.
__________________________________________________
Dec 15, 2018 Original Poetry
At Table, With Song
©December 14th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
People sit at table
With long spoons,
And a steaming pot of stew,
And through stories and songs,
They remember an entire history,
Re-cast, and re-membered,
As they build it word by word.
I want the memories of my life
Shared by many around a table,
With long spoons, all humming,
Or singing, in-between spoonfuls.
I want to re-member everything,
And re-order a whole life.
Songs seep through skin,
And settle deep in bones,
Even as things slip away.
I can settle for this, find peace.
And though dissolution is certain,
I’ll go out singing, defiant.
Another will take my place
At the table, and share a pot of stew.
I will be as the air in their lungs,
Just as you were in mine before this.
___________________________________________________
Dec 14, 2018 Original Poetry
Tilt
©December 14th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
Blue light filters into a crooked room
With tilted frames, and tilted books,
And tilted vision in a tilted mind.
I look sidewise, and spot
A passing whim, flirtatious and winsome.
I am determined, though, and
Look away. I shall not be seduced.
I have things to do,
And places not to be.
Nine camels follow a tenth,
Noses high, tails stiff,
Free of camel-drivers, free of burdens,
And still trapped within a narrow frame,
Tripping on sunset sands,
Ringed with gold, and red, and gold.
They have somewhere to be,
And will be forever getting there.
I have somewhere to be, too.
But here I am.
Four plastic stars, luminescent at night
Lie flat against a tilted wall.
It’s daylight. They have no job to do.
They stay there, placid and pointless,
Like the clothes on the floor,
Lumped willy-nilly in haste and abandon.
A naked wire-man blows an eternal horn,
With a naked wire-woman flying by his side,
Hair streaming in an unseen wind,
A dove in her hand, and a tambourine
In another: Eve and Adam in a white sky.
And, trapped within a picture frame,
They, too, keep flying, free, trapped.
The sun comes tilting through
My dusty windows, criss-crossed
By the branches of distant trees.
And here I am,
With tilted visions in
A tilted mind.
_________________________________________
Dec 14, 2018 Original Poetry
Gift-Wrapped
©December 13th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
There is a gift-wrapped box
Somewhere, ready to be opened.
And a man or a woman
Seated within it, waiting to be known.
That they are in a box
Might be entirely their doing,
Or it might not be.
The question is: When you open it –
If you open it –
And they spring up,
Full of the bounce of a released self,
Will you quickly shut the box, or
Will you go away, unsure and rattled?
Will you help them climb out,
And walk around in your world?
Will you speak to them, or shout?
Or, will you shut your ears
When they open their mouths to speak?
Where you were, what you did,
What you said, and what they said,
Before you reached that box – all these
Focus like a laser-cutter
On that box, when you open it.
Now, unknowing and blank, you’ve
Opened it, was it simply because
You passed by it, and it was
Nicely wrapped up with a bow?
Ah, but there are so many bows,
So very many boxes,
And so very many gifts.
And all I want is to release them,
Not direct them – they may go
Entirely where they please.
I will release them, and step back,
And admire the beauty within
Before they step out, and flee
Far, far away from where
They sat imprisoned.
I will release them, and step back,
And admire the beauty within
Before they step out, and flee
Far, far away from where
They sat imprisoned.
I will collect all the pretty bows,
And wait to give them to the first
One who returns.
__________________________________________
Dec 13, 2018 Original Poetry
Turning
©December 12th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
The hum of the refrigerator,
The crunching of food by dog,
The clicking of fingers on keyboard,
And the thrum of my blood –
These form the sonic landscape
In which my night unfolds.
The day was long, and full,
And entirely practical,
And the evening was loud with song,
Magic stories flowed, and lights
Followed them on stage,
And there was goodwill,
While waiting for entrances
And scattered exits,
With conversations and friendships
Blooming like night-flowers
In unexpected stairwells and hallways.
A fingernail moon hangs forlorn
Somewhere in n a night sky
Unfettered by clouds, and perhaps,
Just once, for at least one night,
All is well with the world.
The earth turns in her sleep.
I shall follow suit.
__________________________________
Dec 12, 2018 Original Poetry
Shuttle
©December 11th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
The weaving of magic
Happens with many hands,
Many threads, and a vision
That cuts through past and future,
And makes and eternal present –
A gift to those who arrive,
Hoping to be transported.
Ephemeral it is, this magic,
And full of the poignant joy
Of its rich, multi-threaded beauty,
All the more poignant because,
It fades quietly when we leave,
Like a tapestry in full sunlight
Pouring through an open window,
That somebody forgot to shut.
And yet, it is an eternal present,
Living in memory, fading, but persistent,
As long as we live, and walk this earth.
Our cells remember, even when we don’t,
And our ears hold songs and words,
Even when we cannot.
We are the sum of our parts,
And our parts know more than we do.
I want the whole of me to know
What every part of me knows,
To have eyes and ears that see and hear
From all directions, all dimensions.
But, you see, that can never happen.
For how can a cell know the body?
And this magic moves through it all,
Weaving strand over strand, thread over thread,
The shuttle goes back and forth,
Back and forth, back and forth,
And the patterns that emerge tell a story.
I want to make the pattern,
And be the pattern, and be
The unceasing shuttle that moves
Back and forth, back and forth.
_________________________________________
Dec 11, 2018 Original Poetry
Coming Home
(At Sanders Theatre Today)
©December 10th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
In the dim recesses of the room,
Lights shine like forgotten memories
Surfacing among wood and metal.
Voices fill spaces and vaulted ceilings,
And the wood swallows up
All the songs, and hugs them close.
People cluster close, and their voices
Ring like vast gongs struck by lightning,
And the wood gathers them up.
My guitar is like this.
My guitar grew with my voice
Year after year, so that when
My voice was lost, I found it hiding there.
So it is with you when you are lost.
You’ll find yourself over and over again
In unexpected places. So, keep looking.
Forget compasses and stars.
Forget directions and maps.
Do this when you’re lost:
Find an old room you love, sit there,
Gather the air close, and sing in
All of your lost selves.
The wood remembers, the wood
Always remembers.
And all the molecules of sound
That cradled you from you birth
Will cluster close around you,
So that even when you carry your breath
From your birthplace to that foreign land,
You’ll always come home.
____________________________________________________