FIVE POEMS BY DR. SANTOSH BAKAYA INCLUDING A CONCRETE POEM AND AN ONOMATOPOEIC ONE WITH A MESOSTIC

Internationally acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu (Vitasta Publishers, 2014),

Dr.Santosh Bakaya is an academician -poet-essayist- novelist-reviewer-Ted x speaker, whose Ted talk on 'The myth of writer's block' is quite  popular in creative writing classes.

She writes a much appreciated column in Learning and Creativity.com, Morning Meanderings, and is the recipient of the Reuel International Award for her long hundred page narrative poem,Oh Hark !(2014). 

The Setu international Award in recognition of her 'stellar contribution to world literature '  2018(Pittsburgh ,USA),
The Universal Inspirational Poet Award (Ghana government and Pentasi B ,2016),
Bharat Nirman Award 'for brilliance in the field of writing' , 2017 

The First Keshav Malik Award ,2018 ,for 'her entire staggeringly prolific and quality conscious oeuvre' in fiction, prose and poetry are some of the  other awards that she has received . 

Her other books are :

Where are the Lilacs ?(Poetry,Authorspress, 2016 )

Under the Apple Boughs (Poetry, Authorspress, 2017 )

Flights from my Terrace( Essays, Authorspress, 2017)
 A Skyful of Balloons [ novella , Authorspress , 2018] 

Bring out the tall tales (short stories with Avijit Sarkar,Authors press, 2019)

Only in Darkness can you see the Stars :a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (Vitasta , 2019)

ALL RIGHTS BELONG ONLY TO DR SANTOSH BAKAYA

The hens in their pens

Time it was, when in my prelapsarian haven,
the sounds had  not lapsed into a cacophony,
when it was only the cicadas chirping frenziedly,
and the noisy hens skittering madly,
cackling in tones of agonized entreaty,
as they were chased into their pens.

 Then came autumn!
Those copper leaves,
so much a part of memory, bid adieu to those branches
 to which they had clung with a fragile resilience
swirling to the ground to rest on a new home.

On another half- clad tree,
sat a sad little robin singing its autumnal dirge,
while the autumn leaves fell on us one by one,
singing elegies, tinged with hope. 
The hope of resurrection.

 
A long way away from home,
I recall how I had roamed its vales and meadows,
inhaling the fragrances of my snug universe
singing happy verses.

But, now, death parades,
uniformed and starched,   strict-looking.
 Chinars mourn, willows weep, and parched lips
 mumble incoherently.
Narrow slits, they say, were eyes once
looking at the horizon,
 will the sun rise today?
Hens once robust and feisty
are again chased into their pens,
as agonized entreaties rent the air,
 but none hears them,
as freedom pens its swan song stooped,
and stooping more every day
under a leafless, skeletal tree. 
 

Near the bougainvillea creeper

 I glimpse a rosy- cheeked toddler being pushed around
 in a perambulator as the young mother twitches
his tiny sunhat in place, looking at him fondly,
as he sleeps in the warmth of the sun- sheathed pram.

Now and then, she glances nonchalantly
at the gardener tying the vines,
trimming the fence, and noisy kids
quickly dropping their rubber balls,
hopping towards the spunky squirrels,
skidding, squealing and screaming.

 She sits on a bench under a tree,   
 its leaves sprinkling the two 
 with shots of vivid sunshine.
She sighs a blissful smile,
pushing a tendril of the baby’s hair from his face.
‘Aww’, she gushes as the child smiles in sleep.
Then she beckons her fond husband,
 standing  near the lily pond, who rushes to her side,
leaping towards her in two quick strides, 
bending down to kiss the child,
glowing with ineffable pride.
 The morning is almost over,
but a poem is born right there
near the bougainvillea creeper.

In the Shadows

Life sits in the shadows , multi- tasking,
oft crocheting bibs for her babies,
to burp and puke on,
smoothening them on her sturdy knees
[not the babies, but the bibs! ]
with massive sighs of satisfaction ,
 often jerked with rib -ticking laughter .

 
The babies tumble around, chortling and lisping. 
She soothes the colicky ones in hard hitting indignation,
smiling at them over her spectacles, gives a dry chuckle,
happy that her expostulation prevails. 
 Oft peering down with a serious judicial expression,
 having a mind to tweak their noses,
 sometimes their desultory songs and eloquent silences
 soothe her; sometimes speaking in a lofty strain,
 gives her a high. A sigh escapes her lips, and often
 her lightness of tone masks a faint alarm. A pesky refrain.

She looks at the quivering fingers of an emaciated woman
trying to make the buttons and the buttonholes
of her child’s tiny shirt meet.
When she fails miserably, Life wrings her hands,
gnashes her teeth
and looks away.

 

The walking stick

A soggy old man, groggy with sleep, heads towards his tumble down cottage.
His eyes look around frantically for his lost calf; ‘ho! ho! ho!’  He bellows
some vague impulses, some wayward fancies, some laughable absurdities,  
and recurrent revelries, whirl in the mind of this soggy, old shepherd.
A twig between his chipped and discolored teeth, breathing
in sporadic bursts, eyes fixed at a beetle, predator-like.
There is the gentle, soothing tinkle of a goat’s bell,
his eyes light up, looking around frantically,
a benediction springs to his lips,
easing a crick from his neck
rubbing a nervous tic, he
gropes for his stick,
finds it, then he
hobbles forth,
stumbling.
Shouting   
happily. 
Baba’,
bleats
the
calf.
Says
he,  
ho
ho
ho
ho
ho
ho
Ho
ho
ho! 
ba
ba
ba
ba
says
the
lost
one
in
joy.  
 
 Whiplashes of time

Those waves, ah those waves!
Why does he keep going back to those waves?
 How they sparkled, how they gleamed,
as though a rose-tinted dream
played peekaboo with his senses,
 confusing his tenses, mauling his syntax,
vexing him with a teasing chuckle,
cocking a snook at grammar
 vanishing into the surfing foam,
with the force of a hammer.
 Those rippling waves, ah those roaring waves!
The waves, waves, waves.

Overhead, a shard of a once colorful kite,
 brings a smile to his wistful face.
 It does some sort of a belly dance
 as a blustery wind lashes it with all its might.
 The summer sun of an alien land scorches him,
singes him, bringing him thoughts
of those waves, waves, waves.

So far away from home, his ears still
ring with melodic murmurs of the waves
 that he left behind,
 whiplashed and uprooted,
 his name still etched on that ancient pine tree. 
The waves, waves, waves.

Reminiscent of the tintinnabulation of Poe’s Bells
 they chime rhymes of the melodic times. 
‘What a world of merriment their melody foretells ‘.
The waves, waves, waves. 

He ploughs on With lacerated feet

Grimy hands, Appealing

Trying so hard To                  

Walk on, parchEd lips

Mouthing an eaRnest plea
for water
through parched lips.

Every year he is richer by one more wrinkle.
 But, oh, where, is now the merry tinkle
of the waves, waves, waves?
 Now, he hears only a threnody
of the waves of the River Lidder.
The waves, waves, waves.
  
How they roared, roared, roared,
billowing, surging, swinging , breaking, curling,
rushing, purging  , swelling , whirling , uncurling
undulating , rolling ,pell- melling  
The waves , waves , waves …..
He misses the way they kissed his feet,
beating, crashing bashing, thrashing, lashing, dashing
 the waves, waves, waves.