When December's chill predominates--

When December's Chill----


When December’s chill predominates the fresh morn,
January’s Sun-God leading the harvest festival,
gingered stubs, jaggery and sugarcane and wood apple,
fill the almost torn bamboo baskets tilted to the floor,
vociferous shop women gather the buyers, who bargain,
both the buyer and the vendor hoping for a new beginning,
one counts the coffers, counts and counts, careful enough
not to be discounted by the tipsy husband,
a car drove past the struggling man with the long
sugar cane on his shoulder, punch and push,
why do they not stop and care the uncared many?
Yesterday’s scar has furthered into uncanny canning,
a young urchin bullied for purloining eggs in his torn
trousers that betrayed his petty act, a peanut matter.

I think of those days in England walking on the clean roads,
the tip of my nose reddened, the soft skin in-between the
toes itching, for the cold and foggy weather ring around,
I too look around for a cafeteria, to wet my parched throat,
smoky vapours of cappuccino, an impetus for writing,
mind wandering on cows and running dogs, spaced
between autos and automobiles, scaring school children,
already burdened with notebooks more of imposition
than of exercise, that is India, for India cannot be
without these, interminable laws and hooks.
I think of those days in England when my quill
reigned like a queen in glowing embers,
I think of these days when my internet is timed out,
I am in intangible, insubstantial rut,
December’s chill predominates the fresh morn.