Of Flying Hyacinths and Monet (A Poem)

(Published in The Little Journal of Northeast India, Issue 7 )

https://www.the-little-journal.com/categories/posts/poems/60705c95a093f30017de012c

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Those are my grandmother’s eyes

floating on Silsako’s purple patch;

these water lilies, I have seen them before

flying with hyacinths, escaping the turbulence

of ma’s wicker khaloi pacing

the needles of kawoi fishes in thick mud

and letting the sky in, once in a while

like her hair parted by the wind rightly.

Why green smells like naphthalene balls to me

has an answer folded in ma’s mekhela,

now lost in the waves of one huddled wetland

packed tightly in a box of bricks.

People die, places die too.

Silsako, you are shreds from her golden sari,

the printed buds have blossomed now, in pink.

You are my canvas

you are Monet’s.

-Jharna Choudhury