These poems are always born colourful.
Pointy and symmetrical, they are life, crafted
Specially for schools that have no bell-rings
Or even recesses. How dull it must be.

They come in different morals: steaming ships
And inexperienced rafts, all trying to taste the
Same water at once. The ships do have an advantage
With big chimneys but it’s the rafts that are more careful.

And how kaleidoscopically they flaunt themselves!
Angels are always with their kin (how saintly), and tigers proudly
Race with their predation pride. The normal ones
Adapt normally, till the gold one comes oval-gaping for air.

It is almost operatic, the bullion fatly singing
A joyful soprano that spirals its corpulent body,
Indelibly marking its forte and making
Everyone else envious. The rest soon join in the orchestra.

Colloid-free, their airy world so thin and wet, the
Little air bubbles drop, drop, drop as clock-like as possible
To balloon and reign the surface. The water’s
Fully bloomed now. They are ready to breathe.

Doctor’s miracles, they are born with unblinking eyes.
Their skin flat and overlapped like thin slices of birdfeathers
And wide bloodless cuts run at each cheek. They defy
Physics with their aerodynamic bodies and a thousand striped hands.

Every nook and cranny of their house is carpentered accurately:
Mirror-rimmed and exact. Windows glued for viewing, flawless.
The tenants move about freely, occasionally pausing to wave
At the guests through the translucent eye pieces.

Untiringly they follow the irises that gawk at their gill-full skins.
The cameras icily smile flashes and these water-gods snap away
Like graceful thunders. Their scissor-tails dance from side to side, panicky,
With only three precious seconds added to their memory.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002