MOTHER'S DAY BY SHIV K KUMAR
We do it differently
in this dark continent.
Not just once a year
a string of spurious verses
ensconced in a bouquet
shaped like Chinese house of dreams.
My mother is more demanding -
an obeisance at each sunrise,
like a devotee throwing a handful
of yellow rice to the birds.
Holding a candelabrum before an idol,
Just once a year
Is desecrating it.
Whenever I see a caterpillar slouching
towards a pansy's eye,
or hear ancestral voices in a wind's howl,
I invoke my deity -
sometimes twice a day.