Urvashi Bahuguna \ Spring 2015

*

Last ride before the monsoon 

Spires appear between trees 
then in a rush – whole churches 
white on the riverfront. 

When we return by moon, 
candles are ablaze 
a million ants scaling to the cross. 

We count churches like daughters: 
Santa Monica, Basilica, Nossa Senhora do Monte, 
Aldona, Brittona: Our Lady of the Rock. 

Laterite bulwarks curl the boundaries like lace 
on a mantilla veil. Someone has placed champas 
their yellow yolks facing sky on the water-washed parapets. 

Civilization gives way to mangroves and ferns atop 
wooden poles. In the shallow, the boat kicks up schools 
of fish in leaping arcs like the opening of folding fans. 

We watch the surface for the eyes 
of a gator, we lower our hands 
into the lilting waves raised by the hull. 

In a sky ample with bats, the sun ebbs back 
into the river until it rests – 
a halting orb in a darkening pool. 

The procession of widows sweeps to river height at low tide 
to caution: it is time for boats to go home. 
We turn the motor off and set adrift like the padma lotus. 

The sounds are duplicitous in their numbers, 
to tell the call of a Brahminy kite 
from an Indian cormorant, one must sift 

through the skyborne cries for losses 
unnamed in almanacs. Listening 
to the weeping on the water, some 

piece of us is lost too. And for 
being unknown, it slips 
silvertailed below the still boat.

*

we are a few burials overdue. 

I think of my father’s mind as fresh 
soil over rocky terrain. 

He still wakes my mother in the dead 
of night screaming – catches her mid-dream. 

Suspended between two unreal ports 
their rift washes away like anthills in rain. 

My father buried one thing every day 
for a long time. 

I imagine, sometimes, that he will dig 
out Dehradun lychees, 

and an oak chest full of blue letters 
written to my grandfather. 

The lines of my childhood have run straight 
as he ensured. 

He doesn’t understand whom or 
what I fear. 

He thinks of my mind as a hurricane 
in a landlocked country. 

He looks at me and sometimes 
wants to bury me too.

*

weights & measures

to weave a basket you need more
than hands and time.

squatting on a rough cement path
for a few hours

braiding one skin over the other
without cutting open a knuckle

to find bone frayed and yellow

in the dry heat of the afternoon
is not enough.

when you have more wickers
to your name

than seeds in a red clementine
you will look into

caves and know they do little
more than hold

someone else’s
ivory comb, someone else’s fruit.

*

Urvashi Bahuguna is a writer and a feminist who grew up in Goa. The coastal state continues to inform her work in quiet ways. She recently finished her master's in poetry from the University of East Anglia and now works for an NGO that facilitates girls' education. Her poetry has previously appeared in ​The Four Quarters Magazine, Muse India, ​​The Cadaverine, Flycatcher and elsewhere.​