A Working Woman: My Love Poem by Harsh Bhardwaj

You could easily find this woman
On one construction site,
or another
Carrying
Bricks on her shoulder.
This woman,
when you looked at her
In broad daylight,
Had so much hidden
In the shadows of her
face.
Her lips parched
And glued
To each other
With the saliva that had dried
From the heat of her inside.
Her eyes,
Shady
but not dull
Would not reveal a thing
As if they said
"You cannot be my hands
to feel the pain they endure,
Nor can you be
the bricks that I weigh everyday
Nor the stoop of my back"

But I've seen this women
On places
Where you won't usually find her.
I've seen her
In her straight spine
While the earth weighed itself
On her back.
She was gazing stars.
I lied beside her
When she told me about a hunter
In between the stars, made of 'em
Who appeared
on winter nights;
Her kin;
She loved him!
After that
She had let me in,
many a times,
Inside her eyes,
Not in the daylight
But in solemn dark
When faces loose their shape
And hunger
value!

Inside her dreams
I had found
Not the buildings she had carried the bricks for,
Not the roads
She'd walked barefoot
on molten charcoal
but,
A Jungle!
A jungle
Where winds were returning
from far west,
humming a song
rhythm of which
you could not catch
But the lyrics spoke of
'A new sun
That had born!
A hunter
Who was yet to be born
from the womb of
Blue!

*****
I had been on the lips of this woman
time and again,
And she
was the grass on my chest,
for only she had known how many years!
Yet I had never found,
Lying down by her side
Among the stars
Any Hunter
with an axe in his hand.
Maybe I looked too closely
Or,
Maybe
only she knew
the structure
of an axe
And
of the man
holding it!