A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

The Time the Skies Speak to Me

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.

How Lucky I Am

Overheard on Lough Corrib (English translation)