Crossing Bridges Poem by saranyan bee

There are many bridges in this place
the one I see I shall have to cross,
what if long,
arduous and pebble-some,
winds into fogging shore
like a treacherous column?

uncertainty is a sloth intruder,
plucks my guts
like strings of guttural lyre
out of tune with itself,

I knock with knuckles
the whale of it’s span to be certain,
it speaks the voice of hollow,
though feeds my fingers
with freeze-slaps of green water
whose murmur’s melody in the ear,

many images travel
like a band in passing,
- sting of a clove
- clanking food bowl,
- smoke from a bazooka gun,
- mosquito bites in the woods
- piling noise when my homestead
was built amidst rubbles;
abiding, far abiding
is the bloom of her face
in the valley of apparitions:

I speak my mind,
'you are no longer a virgin
my princess,
for in my dreams
there's no law that governs
men of fetters’
though I run

a fugitive is in every head,
unharnessed gallops
in which links
from one world to another
are drugged deliberation,

Silence! Indian pond-heron
roosts on the truss
like a flash,
a way of telling me the bridge is safe
so long I have wings
white and blind.


Saranyan BV © December 2011
Mumbai