Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal, Singapore
It is 8.30 pm here which means
it is 6 pm in Mumbai,
time for Amma to loan me a glimpse
of egg-shell clouds dotting craters of gray.
The sun doesn’t set until 7.15.
Skies of Summer, she says of the sullen breeze,
cows resting under a peepal tree.
Wingless days descend on pebbled sidewalks,
stray strands of lethargy stream clumsily into homes.
Amma points to the new pair of terra-cotta figurines
in the corner, they look cherubic
against the unbridled flow of ember in the skies.
Sometimes, a sickle moon appears at the dusky threshold,
a slender bride flushed with translucent love.
I listen to the distant cry of the Muezzin,
as Amma laments about the passing seasons.
Yesterday Amma panned the camera
to a parakeet on the railing.
I admired the pea-green plumage,
the cherry beak, its long feathered tail.
It glanced at the phone,
ring-necked head tilted forty degrees.
For a moment, our eyes locked.
A bunch of them live in a house down the chowk.
They sail the Deccan sky, sit on the Jacaranda tree,
chirp in the neighbourhood before flocking back home.
Amma’s voice trailed into the caverns of my throat.
Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is a bilingual poet from Singapore. She is a Pushcart prize nominee (2021) and author of Between Sips of Masala Chai (Kitaab International, 2019). Her poems have been featured in QLRS, Yearbook of English Indian Poetry-2021, OF ZOOS, to let the light in, Atelier of Healing, Shot Glass Journal, Taj Mahal Review, Anima Methodi, Asingbol, Unmasked-Reflections on Virus Times amongst other anthologies and journals. Some of her poems written in Hindi have been translated into Spanish. She has read poetry in Malaysia, USA, Mumbai, Australia.