Day Two #Na/GloPoWriMo

#Na/GloPoWriMo 

 Day 2 Prompt: 

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

Here's my attempt. As always, I look forward to your comments and visits.

My mother’s dupatta

 

The citron frogs in high seriousness

croaked in shallow ditches

pitching lazy monsoon afternoons

against slumber curfews imposed by adults,

mostly my mother who was bi-polar.

 

She draped the Sun one half of the year

and hid behind our Moon for the remainder

like bears do in picture books—

gruff, rough, unwashed.

 

Sometimes on the way to the temple, my hand in Mummy’s hand,

she stopped to talk to neighbours she knew.

She knew everyone—everyone was her friend.

And boy could she talk. I’d get tired and drape

my body around her legs like a baby

baboon

and watch her crack jokes, cackle gloriously.

‘Not in front of the children,’ her friends would gawk

at our mother’s veracity to bare her teeth.

 

Rooted in between the folds of her salwar, I’d look

up at the moon--as old 

as my five-year-old eyes--

through the veil

of my mother’s chiffon

lying lopsided across her shoulders

one side short, the other long.

 

Through her dupatta (always pure, sometimes trimmed with lace)

the moon appeared imprisoned

in VIBGYOR

like bangles asphyxiating wrists

like Holi smothering magic

I swear, the only colour missing was citron.

And I’d stare and stare and wish I had a

Lifeboat

at least, or a Ladder to rescue the Moon

from her vibrant misery.

__________________

Thank you for visiting. For more writing by yours truly, visit my website: www.arti-jain.com

Last month's full moon, Doha, Qatar.