Image

She

Santosh talks about the many shades and hues of a woman.

Ah she comes, she comes, a song she hums
Rising above the cacophony of war drums
How she loves to change dresses and masks
This fashionista deftly performing myriad tasks.

She is the arrow plummeting through the forest.
Hugging many an explosive secret to her breast
The swish of the wind galloping through the trees
Misty and mesmerizingly magical, at times a tease.

She morphs into a rain cloud ready to burst
Rearing to quench a parched throat’s thirst
She dies as the last candle in the shepherd’s shack
And then as the rustle of the leaves is again back.

To take a soaring flight to the snow-sheathed peak
Perhaps from its purity some solace to seek?
At times precariously perched on a gypsy woman’s stove
Sometimes pirouetting with a sunray on a chunk of fresh snow.

Morphing into a verse, pricking sensibilities dodoesque
She is the rhythmic linear pattern in a bewitching arabesque.
Emerging from the shadows, in multi- hued dresses attired
At times, on cat feet, she romps around, feisty and untired.

Flying on wings of whimsicality, she comes, she goes.
She is my imagination, embracing both friends and foes.
Stealthily, she creeps inside a beggar woman’s sigh
And then is all a quiver in a mother’s final goodbye.

Picture design Anumita Roy

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Santosh Bakaya
Reuel International Awardee [Poetry,2014], Setu Award for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’ [2018], Eunice Dsouza Award, 2023, [WE Literary Community], Santosh Bakaya, Ph.D., poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, TEDx speaker, has written twenty-three books across different genres, Ballad of Bapu, and Only in Darkness can you see the Stars [Biography of Martin Luther King Jr]. have won international acclaim. “What is the Meter of the Dictionary?" is her latest solo book of poetry.

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