Origami Microchap

 Click title to download microchap

Cover photo provided by author

•

Wait

All that breathes
in the womb of dawn:
the snail at the end of a slow wet trail,
the soft bloom of the rose,
the music of the maroon dragonfly,
all the birds of the sky,
part the silk curtains of time,
wait for the birth
of the kind sun,
so they can, once again,
be wide awake.

Wither

The hoopoe
in his black striped wings,
delicate brown crown,
twilight
tucked away
in his throat,
settles in the sand-hole
to bathe in the calm,
until the hummer
of our loud voices trundles
along clumsily
just in time
to watch
the silence
gently
fly away.

•

Preeth Ganapathy © 2024

Click title to download microchap

Cover: Flowering Jacaranda tree

1.
Purple

flowers down the valley.
The river poems
along the sand banks.
The coucal shies away
from conversations
of sight.
The deer look up -
confident, about
the protection of the sky.
Reeds, nudged by the wind,
sing their songs.

2.

Afternoon Rains

Light

rains, stops, pours, stops.

The fir tree nods, purple

drops, murmurs -

its decibel touches

the cuckoo’s song,

the palm fronds,

the coconut pods,

the glass pane,

the click of keys,

masking the business

of this hour.

 3.

Dusk

At the edge of grey sands,

air spreads her toes.

A sea-gull flies towards the east.

The surf touches the fresh purple

letters formed by the hermit crab’s feet.

Dusk is her shell.

Dusk is what she has.

4.

Finding Summer

To escape the touch of winter’s eye,

the birds

whistle their way to warmth.

First, south,

and then they travel back up.

And then, each time, they perch,

on the tendril

of found

summer.

All their purple lives.

5.

Change

Tabebuia pink arrives in the beginning,

followed by Jacaranda purple

and then Gulmohar red.

The world beneath their feet -

a flaming carpet for

Now.

The painted lady flutters.

She’s home.

In the warm caress

of colours

of change.

6.

After ‘Story of Ferdinand’ by Munro Leaf

When the world rakes the dust

of raucousness under its hoofs,

seeks blood, gore,

El Toro Bravo, smelling flowers

on his own,

by the hill-side,

is the purple silhouette

of a prayer.

•

Preeth Ganapathy © 2023

A Single Moment

Click title to download microchap

Cover: Saffu from weoneness.com
on Unsplash.com

• 

1.
The hidden bakery

The roads are empty.
The sun touches me
through the open car window,
singing a leathery lullaby.

Sleep hangs from the tips
of my eyelids like a trapeze artist.
Words drift away like clods
thrown up by the tyre.

A whiff of freshly baked
bread and cream-bun
perfumes the air.
I search for the bakery,
hidden in the folds
of the afternoon,
but rolled-down shutters
and graffiti-covered brick walls
are all that greet me.

Time taps her wrist. My car trundles past.
I reach home, wide awake
to the scent of that single moment.

2.
Yoga Classes

“A flexible body implies
a flexible mind,” master says.
I try to stretch my limbs like two strands
of rubber bands. Elastic, tensile.

We flow like water from sun salutations,
to warrior pose and still at the lake of the child pose.

Each sinew, every tendon
inhales the freshness of the dawn –
dew laced, gold trimmed.

We move from boat pose,
to pigeon pose and stop at shavasana.

I feel the time-stretch of
a single movement,
drip
into the peaceful reservoir of
a single moment.

3.
Calm

covering the velvet morning
light shining through the dome
of a cerulean sky,

warming the square patch of garden,
where the boy plays hide and seek
with the ladybird,
crawling up a white tulip petal,

hovering over the piebald dog
at the edge of
the cool cement pavement,

mingling with the scent
of leaves dancing like
green candle flames
in the wind,

and finally settling on
the whispered conversations
I have with my breath:
fine like tea dust,

calm is a warm blanket
over a single moment.

.

4.
The rains and afterward

A butterfly listens -
to the ancient secrets of
a jasmine bud,
to the song of a stone.

The sky mirrors the lake
before it turns white, thin -
thinness equal to that of onion skin.

The sound of drizzling rain
on the red-tiled walkway
is soft like the
whispers of gossip.

Somewhere along the corridor,
an open window pane
sleeps silent, warm.

*

Later, the tree shakes water off
her leaves like a damsel
fresh from her bath.

The sun is curious, grazes low
and settles on the rim of a bucket
filled with honeyed January.

I watch the raindrops dance
at the edge
of a parabolic cable wire
like deft rope walkers,
each balancing at the tip
of a single moment.

•

Preeth Ganapathy © 2021