I am a mother without a child
Who comes to me for comfort.
I am a mother with a child
Who walked away from loving care
And chose to be a distant friend
Instead of a loving daughter

I am a mother with only one
Who really wanted to have two,
And wouldn’t have been sad at three.
But never won the right to choose
And had to make the best of what
Was offered as my portion.

Fifty years have come and gone
Plus two more for good measure.
The gap has narrowed not a whit
And my path still skirts the chasm.
I reach with practiced carefulness
To read the card that is my lot
As a mother with no daughter.
ljm

I engraved her name on the picnic table
Then I engraved the stone over her grave
I engraved the memory of her face on my heart
I engraved the words on the walls of  my prayers
Then out of desparation I engraved her memory in poem

Cast thy nostril to the air
To sense the magnitude of change,
What was then is now no more,
The atoms, rearranged.

Touch thy fingertips to life
To feel, as difference lingers there,
For what was smooth and sensuous
Now calloused, in abrasive air.

Know, that in a passaged time
The trickled sands invert their flow,
For what was once a comfort stop
Becomes an unsafe place to go.

Skill, once held in high repute
No longer wields the mantle now,
Torn the chaliced riches, worn...
Gone, the wealth of sacred cow.

Vast, the might of new elite
Emergent in its chosen time
Fallen, now the vanquished
In the tragic wayside, left behind.

Gone, is the old world
In its jaded coat of faded charm,
Reshuffled, to obscurity
Whilst surging new blood, fast rearm.

Where once, there stood a working forge
Which fashioned mighty wheels of steel,
Now shifts, a field of windblown wheat
Which cares not, one jot, what you feel?

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ

This thought has always haunted me.

People you meet once
and never again in your life.

You have a static picture in your mind
of their face
the small conversation
their little story they tell you
the place you met them
in a bus, a shop, on the road
interactions not long
but meaningfully small
yet leaving a memory in you.

I think of all those people
I stopped by to ask for time
seek direction of my destination
or asking where I might find
food or a resting place
in an unfamiliar area.

Once and just once you meet them.

On a summer trip, I was looking for icecream
in a strange place off the highway
walked ten minutes to find a shop
where for that brief encounter
the seller made me feel like
he had known me for long
shared the history of that area
the migration and culture of the residents
before helping me with the right icecream.

Sometimes I wonder
if they would have enriched my life
were they part of my association.

Not scholars, not rich, but simple men
who bring you down to earth
and carve a space in your mindscape.

Sadly you meet them once in your life.

I feel it's so designed.

I’m a Bengali in sombrero
An Indian from Kolkata
I live at a stone’s throw
From where flows the Ganga.

I speak in Bengalee
For me the sweetest language
Like the Ganga flows freely
Has Sanskrit as lineage.

Rice is my staple food
So are dal and fish
A cup of tea is too good
With two biscuits on a dish.

Around me spreads green countryside
Where grows all the foodgrain
Rivers flow wild and wide
Their banks home joy and pain.

I was born and reared in this riparian land
Where soil is tilled in peasants’ sweat
Sparkles in moon the Bay’s white sand
Weaving dreams for many a poet!

Time draws close for dispersal.

Coming summer there'll be no traces
of the faces beaming at the gate.

Eyes sparkling lips apart
breaking into one more dance
to be in the sunlight under sky.

Hugs and kisses fly in the wind
maybe one last embrace
for all time to come.

They'll see the world differently
and their paths will never meet,
most likely.

The most intimate will become strangers
before once more
they disperse at the gate.

I turn back with the weight of this memory.