Poems by Jaya Abraham

Winterlude

Tell me about December
The soft sigh of the latches
The clouded mirrors
In the washroom
Resolutions smudged
They peep out again
In a trail of ants
Their adventures quashed
By the surreptitious
Sugar- coated words
Dripping from the yellow pages
Of an old diary
The last minute hurry
Of the twelve angels
Who forgot my name
The bold truth in red
On the calendar’s last leaf
Like the birthmark
On my shoulder
The obdurate leaves
Of the autumn
Agony running
In their veins, too red
They beg
For one more day of love
True to the heart
True to the bones.

Remembering mother

Look at a woman
Who is searching for lost things.
She is attention, single-pointed
She keeps searching
All over the house
Forgetting everything else,
With the enthusiasm
Of a mariner
In search of a continent
Yet to be discovered.
The solitary stud you lost,
The star shaped button
On the polka dress
Of your daughter
The blue handkerchief
You bought yesterday,
She keeps searching
For all of them.
Then the house gleefully opens
All its secret cellars wide
And smiles at her.
The kids mumble,
The things that mom cannot recover
Are the only things
Lost forever
Yet, she keeps losing herself
Like a dark isle,
Irrecoverable.

Candy Jar

The little clots of love
Wrapped in green glossy paper
Tip toed out, one by one
From my grandmother’s candy jar.
Every time she looked inside,
Her eyes strayed back to me
Quizzical, she fished out my lies
From the twin dark wells of my eyes
Faster than kingfishers
I said, no, I didn’t steal them.
Head swaying naive sidewards.
The candies chuckled
In my mouth, sweet and loud
Eighty years wild
She met my laughter
Eyes twinkling.
Between me and her
The candy jar of time
Emptied day by day
I bloomed, she withered.
Now, in the hum of the silence
After strong gusts of wind,
At the sunset, no one around
Eyes mellow, in learning and loving
I slide my motherly fingers
Into the old candy jar,
Memories chuckle,
Green and glossy as ever.