Dec 14, 2015 Original Poetry
Dog and Snout and Door, or, Unreasonable Sense
©December 14th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
If a picture paints a thousand words,
I shall paint Her straining, pointing
Sense of smell, Her mystic Nose;
Knife-bladed, full of delicate velvet,
Wet with warm canine intuition,
Her Nose sketches out landscapes
Full of squirrels and raccoons.
And Her Nose, mapping
Topographic incongruities
And atmospheric pressure,
Leads me straight into the door.
My head connects.
Strange swim of stars and birds
Swarming around head and bursts
Of sharp sensation, a whack of
Reality across my snout!
Ah, see those Feet pad surely across
Landscapes of dream and desire
Snout and feet that hold dim
Yearning memories of a calm Mother.
Memories of warm mother’s milk, and
Squirming bodies of fur — squealing
And squeaking memories.
Now, detecting butter and cheese
With impeccable precision, the Nose
Leads her straight to me.
See her hold on the world.
Her implacable hold, full of
Bitter resentment at Authority.
The world careens, galactic core
Glistens and beckons, but
The Nose holds steady.
See how that squirrel jumps
From its hilly hollow of logs
See how it logarithmically
Scales the senses, and makes
The Nose leap for a dream, as I follow
And slam face-first into the door
Leading to a world where logic
And magic marry and produce
Leaping birds and flying frogs —
When they sit, they stand, almost,
When they jump, they fly, almost.*
My nose grows, a bulbous fruit,
Full of outrage and tear-filled
Indignation. Such indignity
When I slammed into that door!
And across the vast region of Nose
My senses detect alarm and
Despondency, and a dejection
Of dog-Tail.
Forgiveness, the function
Of love and understanding,
Makes herself scarce, then
Returns, a bride, full of
Shy reluctance at the threshhold
But willing, willing to endure.
For love conquers all,
Even a whack on the snout
By leaping Door,
Arising between Canine and me.
I shall now begin to paint
That picture of a thousand words —
Or perhaps, as a concession
To contrite Canine (contrite as concrete)
Only three hundred and fifty-two words
Unreasonably inviting sense.
_______________________________________________________
*Reference to a round we sing in my family:
What a queer bird the frog are
When he sit he stand, almost
When he jump, he fly almost
When he sing, he cry almost,
And he ain’t got no tail.
Hardly, he ain’t got no tail.
And he sit on what he ain’t got, almost.
Tags: #Poetry, #Writing 101, Dog-Nose, Door, Fun, Human, Not-quite-nonsense poetry, Stars and Birds, Topological Contemplations
Jan 8, 2015 Original Poetry
Playing with My Dog
©January 8th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
It’s water leaping into the air
Catching light and tossing it up.
It’s laughter and growls
And scurrying and skittering
And funny mock-battles.
It’s being willing to shed
Time and dignity
And be utterly free.
It’s letting go of dead weights
Encircling ankles, gripping me
By the neck.
It’s saying, Yes, death waits
But I will simply be
Right here, right now.
This is what it means
To play with my dog.
I will play.
And sing.
I will tug at my dog’s toy
And bring her joy.
I will leap and pirouette
And jump and spin.
For, at the end of the day
After all the news and the din
Of competing stories, voices
People tapping at my head
Waiting to get in,
There is just this:
Time narrowing down:
A living room, a rectangle
Of wood and light,
Colors and music,
And a dog with
Rubber chicken in mouth
Growling happily while I
Tug and pull and play.
And we leap around each other,
All existence sharpened
To this point. None else.
___________________________________________________________________________
Tags: Chronicles of Holly, Fun, Holly, Playing With my Dog
Mar 20, 2013 Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Playground Hour — A Poem
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 20th, 2013
We were godlings for an hour.
Cold, cold air snapping at our ankles,
Obliging crunch of snow underfoot,
Nose smarting with arctic anticipation,
Ears aflame, feet double-socked, snow-boot shod,
Frame encased in layer upon layer
(A true New Englander now, twenty-four years gone),
I walked mitten-in-mitten with my girl
To the playground.
A pretty spaniel along the way,
Raced up and down her fence, ready to play,
A shy, timorous dog a little further on
Trembled and shook at our approach,
But suffered our soothing caresses,
Terrified of who-knew-what.
While his body was cradled by loving mistress
(“He’s always scared, we don’t know why,”
She explained, reassuringly.)
Perhaps, he sensed we were godlings.
On we went, my daughter and I
To the playground, where she and I
Were the sole owners of a blue-white space,
And the sun struggled in vain to light a void
At once dark-gray and summer blue,
A study in battling contradiction, with
Moon scudding past clouds on the left,
Sun sinking grandly on our right;
A sky-statement that promised warmth
But delivered empty light.
We godlings don’t mind.
We raced up and down the snow-crushed slides,
Fell backwards on crystallized snow,
Gazed up at the ringing sky,
Heard the heartbeat of the earth
For a few, still, silent moments
While six p.m. traffic, frantic and home-fixated,
Ebbed and flowed on a distant shore.
The earth hummed into our spines,
As the sky flowed away from our arms
Outstretched on the snow.
We were truly godlings, light-haloed.
Then, with sudden uprush of glee, we arose,
Startled the still air with our cries
And our crashing feet. Elemental,
We threw snowballs at each other.
Shrieks of joy from child,
Muttered imprecations from mother,
Fun on a swing, meeting the skies,
We played, snow-muted.
Then, alas! It was time to leave.
Our magic hour was up.
Time to resume human form.
Godlings have to deal with time, too.
“No! Let’s stay! Can’t we?” she said,
Sparking rebellious, but subsiding.
“I wish we lived here,” she sighed.
But, she came, obediently, hand in mine.
She knew we would play there again,
Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps all the days
Flowing through her childhood.
For she truly came from the Gods.
And I watch her grow, enchanted.
And so, homeward-bound, we tromped,
Watching the sky unfold
Into deepening layers of color.
And the distant Tower swam into view,
As we sloped, tilting earthward,
Down, down, down to where we lived,
Home, for dinner. How human!
But we were godlings for that hour.
And we shall be so, again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Childhood, #Mother and Daughter, #Original Poetry, Fun, Godlings, Play, Playground, Snow-games