To Mother Poem by Shruti Das

I saw you mother
grow out of your silver hair and painful knees
to scale those seventy-five years
that you had left behind,
to don a frilly frock and
squabble with your little brother
over your favourite rag doll or
those unripe mangoes, jealously guarded,
while your mother was away attending to domestic things.
I heard music,
Sweeter than any heard ever before,
as your voice cadenced around memories
of your childhood secretly held
over seventy lost Springs.
I saw you, Mother,
rise out of your tired body
-slightly hunched with cares of age-
To your alabaster beauty;
Tall and graceful;
To greet your sibling
and rejoice in his joys.
And, maybe, playfully,
to ruffle his well groomed grey hair;
As you did seventy springs ago;
to watch his head move away in mock irritation.
Mother,
I loved the smile
that played on your lips
and rippled through your words as
they left you to hold us spellbound.
Your wrinkles were no more;
Your face alight with a beauty that
even Venus envied.
Age left you untouched
as you spoke childlike
of the afternoons of escapes into
muddy water puddles
your little brother running after you.
I saw today,
your invisible wand
that you used to make me, and
smoothen the fears away from my life.