In The Wee Hours

Light’s about to break

Into yet another day

Along

The sky’s infinite seam,

Time’s here for sailing

The fathomless night

Across

On the bow of a dream.

In sly, bashful pursuit

Her rambling heart

Emptied

Into the silver stream,

The moon hurries along

Her quiet, stealthy way

Toward

The dark distant horizon.

Bidding a fond farewell

Under the night’s cover

Before

The sun’s ’round the turn,

She’s caught though in flight

Abashed, aroused,

Ablush

By the wee hours of dawn.

© Sujatha Warrier 2013

(Included in Suvarnarekha, an Anthology of Indian Women Poets Writing in English, edited by Dr. Nandini Sahu)

At the foothills of Munnar

Mist falling away

From her torso

Lush and dew laden,

The mountain reclines

Dishevelled,

In careless abandon.

Dense, deep, dark

And tousled

Are her wavy tresses

As the cool wind

And drizzle

Shower soft caresses.

Clouds of fog rise

In soft sighs

In the lazy afternoon hour

As she slips in and out

Of a heady,

Lingering sensual languor.

© Sujatha Warrier 2013

[Published in Anthesis – International English Poetry Collection]

The night tonight

The night’s tonight

An overflowing cup

Of sweet sparkling white wine

I drink hard

Into the little hours

And have still not had my fill.

Alone, adrift

In a dark reverie

Drowning a zillion thoughts

I gather anew

Random musings

Drawn from the swirling fathoms.

In vain I seek

To wean off the lure

Of the spilling frothing brim

Still succumb again

To the heady hour

Of the night and the moonlight.

© Sujatha Warrier 2013

[Published in Anthesis – International English Poetry Collection]

Footfalls of Silence

A duet poem is a joy to write when the poets are in tune with each other. Footfalls of Silence is a poem written with Nirmala Sasi Varier for Synthesis, an anthology of duet poems, published by Poiesis Online (Gopakumar Radhakrishnan).

Footfalls of Silence

I tread carefully

lest I trample on the

leaves of your memory,

the murmurs of your presence

still whispering in my ears,

the silence of your absence

resounding in my heart,

your voice in my memory

fading away in timbre,

your call still tugging at my soul.

Lingering with the flies

of fleeting reminiscences

I stall my lonely steps

for your long-awaited footfalls

to catch up with mine,

I pause at every turn

of an unspoken thought

hoping you will intercept

to meet me at this bend or the next

on this road to infinity.

© Nirmala Sasi Varier/Sujatha Warrier 2013

(Included in Synthesis, an anthology of duet poems.)

the attic

Illustration: Bharati Varrier

                                                    

A cluttered storehouse is my attic,

an overflowing archive of rankling thoughts

crammed into dark spaces of isolation.

Accumulations of stubborn grit -

damp, stale, acrid residue from outdated grief -

survive in greasy reticence

the cycles of time and reason.

Rags of unwanted memories,

chunks of broken vases of dreams,

lie abandoned

with old records of truth and fallacies.

Fear, like a creepy multi-legged,

is entrapped in a fuzzy cobweb

of flashbacks and extrapolations.

Will the tarantula crawl out

and traverse the hidden crevices

of the crowded attic of my brain?

I’ll let the darkness, the silence,

and the stillness be,

lest I send the mites –

the qualms –

running all over my raw nerves

in fits of frenzy.

I wish I could vacuum my attic clean.

[Featured as Weekly Poem by Oz Poetic Society for the week February 2-9, 2014]