Dipping Durgas Poem by Uma nair

The drum beats disappeared.
Into the damp twilight.
Scenes of idols swaying.
To celestial music rolling.

Human hands stroking.
My dying dip in the Yamuna
No echoing conch shells
No chants of boys or girls

Human hands lift me
And watch me sinking
Spreading my bounty
Into the riverine

Stroking my sodden
Vastra algae moss mucus
Guzzling my gaze
With water laden tresses

Darkness descends
Loosening my limbs
With scattering trims
Cascading like liquid moonlight

Im sunk in oblivion
In drenched despair
When nimble teenage hands
The rag picker holds my vastra

Her excited voice
Rising above the silence
She walks to her slum
Holding it to her bosom

Hurried footsteps
Tread age old patterns
Durga she says and trembles
I live in slushy side lanes

My vastra faded
Like a sepia tinted
Photograph that whispers
To the mango leaves

Wet and glinting
Smiling and speaking
Through the swirling wetness
' Forgotten Ma Durga

Like pearls from
A broken necklace
Mirroring the preface
Of a river rising

Poets speak of floods
Of temples and deities
But not of the cobbled
Steps caused by drowning

You O goddess Durga
No one chants in verse
Of the anguished Yamuna
Robbed of a river's life giving powers.'

2014