I see the fear in your eyes
That I will not fit within
Encircled arms;
And that I will spill over
Arrangements and customs-
Slide through gaps in bonds
Like a hare fleeing a farm;
That I will question
Even facts-
Woo contention,
Talk back-
  Not valiantly smile
  when snubbed,
  or purr contentedly
   when rubbed.

But walk through with you
I will
This life, if not this world-
Guard you against adversity,
Cherish you with a fierce motherliness.

I will bless you
If not with beds,
With great robust bushes of roses
So, take me,
But take me in small doses.

Back then at school,
We had life-skills-
Every week we would be taught, the girls,
Handicrafts by a gentle, lady-like woman.
They taught us macramé, well after it went out of style.
How to unravel and tie-up spools and spools of thread-
Into fancy knots and whirls.
You could hang it on your ceiling
Just beneath the fan, or over your bed.

Then there was the letter box,
Made out of cardboard and wrapping paper.
But not to hang outside, of course.
The glue would dissolve in the rain water.
And the letters would all cry out in jets of blue ink.

Speaking of ink, we made a miniscule brush
Out of old, old pens
And human hair.
It measured about four inches
And you could clean the ridges between tiles
With it,
or brush your moustache
if you had one.
The class was always there
You couldn’t skip it, miss it or play truant.
Life-skills, you will need them when you grow
And you’ll thank me when you flaunt-
Them to your cynical mothers- in-law.

Nipuni Ranaweera

A poem once came to me.
I was pouring water
On my infant’s fragile head.
I didn’t want to lose count
So, I let it slide, down and down
And it lay there, on the ground
Quite dead.

A poem once winked at me
Skulking beyond the shadowy shrubs
Where my child walks before being fed.
But because he must return, and
Not miss his customary turn-
I turned it into a lullaby
And wheeled it home to bed.

Like obstinate waves upon
a composed beach-
I pound on you, vertically,
I crash on you, horizontally.
I lash at you in all manner of ways,
In all manner of waves,
Because you are there -so solid-
Momentarily obscured by spray
But never really out of reach.
Each time I come, riding
Triumphantly on sea horses-
Or simply pushed ashore by other forces,
a gutted residue, a hapless prey
you are always there- unsmiling, you wait
for my unpredictable beat-
eroding ever so slightly- a little, each time
but providing, as always-
Land for my feet.

( After the Easter Bombing, 2019)

To daily travelers like me,
Mr. Aziz was a common sight on the train.
Small and bearded, clean and bright
He was the perfect train companion.
Newspaper in hand, brief case clutched tight
He would smartly stand up for the ladies,
book tickets and hold parcels
For the less fortunate.
An old hand in the Kandy line
His neat little person ideal
For walking between temperamental
Carriages, rubbing intimately
Against ill-fitted hinges,

Despite creaking bolts
And rusty fringes.

When the trains started again, mid-May
He was a changed man.
Suddenly his clothes hung on him loosely
And people looked at him askance.
They slithered further from him
In the ticketing queue-
And no ladies wished to hold his parcels.
There were subtle evasions
And cruel barbs-
And one day he comes, his beard gone
The valleys and shadows of his face open to
Our stripping gaze.
He settles himself awkwardly in a corner-seat
Wishing himself invisible
And somehow, I know,
That this is the beginning of an end,
He will perhaps retire a few months in advance,
Sit on his porch in glum silence-
Recalling the magical sway of old carriages,
Rubbing with familiarity through tunnels and lanes-
Like old lovers, though ill-matched,
arrange creaking limbs on creaking beds.

Despite creaking bolts
and corroded chains.