Emotional Clouds Poem by Saroj Padhi

Marooned by the muddy flood waters
of the angry river thatswallowed a large chunk
of our village yester night,
we came rowing in old leaking boats
to find a safe haven on the nearby barren hill
where constant spray of rain on sleepy eyes
keeps us alive thro' nights and days ofsighs;
copters fly over, drowning in their pointless drones
the elegies of little cormorants, larks and tattler birds
that circle over the under-water paddy fields
smelling of raw fish;
telephone towers in the distance twinkle
like wounded stars of a high-tech civilization
unfolding a grim message aboutimpending storms
as the crescent moon is caught in a whirlpool of clouds
grown highly emotional
about healing burns on body of far-off hills;
our boats slowly sink and the oars are gone
as startled,grey cranes on the brink look on;
we long for our home and hearth
washed away overnight and wait for floods to abate
inside our temporary tent
as a faint rainbow appears in the eastern sky
unfolding new hues of hopein the morning's eye
and we awake like lotuses, withheads inside water
during storm, that rise backin refusal to droop or die.