SUKESHI HAS A DREAM

Seasons

Summer breezes
part leaf-lips:
dark green,
bright green,
white sun, red sun.
Steel gray
afternoons.
Agony, ecstasy
of a mid-summer's
redwood tree.

Moon monopolizes
hypnotizes
pale green domes
of a mosque.
A girl in rose pink
silk and lace,
lit by a candle
waits
for her bridegroom.
He is to be taken
away soon after,
during dawn prayers.

Tarquin's stride
shall ravish
still sad beauty 
of a bride,
when winds change.
War winds
not trade winds.
Trees will be bare.

Redwoods
flowerless,
bowerless
gardens, growing
random grasses.
Water without sound,
without a ripple.
A few last drops
fall on red,
red berries.
January snow 
is hardly new.
It wears a solemn 
grace, dry eyed,
lays out a corpse
without a face.

[© Lalita Pandit, June 30, 1997].