Some mornings are marked in the calendar.

A dusty barren walkway

trodden everyday.

The night had nurtured seeds silently

and the morning sun watched the night depart.

Small sprouts surfaced by the time,

and the night did not know.

But the ever vigilant sun noticed.

The seedlings danced with the wind

carrying in their heart the secret the night never knew.

They were the offspring of darkness and the light.

 My last motif is the window. A gateway to lives and people, 

to all that exists in fragmentation. , 

An endless sea, and the infinite sky that overhangs and follows,

and me like a tired carpenter,

mending, replacing,

putting together

the broken parts.

to not let the deluge break into me.

Filling in the gaps with stitches.

I keep myself busy

because one day they are to come through the window

the sky and the sea

I am indecisive whether to let them in

or barricade 

my precarious fragile existence.

On a calm rainy day it changes. 

The wall between me and the world is sawed off. 

The sea and the sky invade,

unannounced.

 Morning! Reflections.

Swirling tides. Falling off.

The sunrise

Haze in the midst of light. 

Morning. I want to sleep, lest this mirage slip in the sands.

Rolling shadows.

A choppy sea, felt from the windows of a submarine.

No bird sings.

A calm that descends 

and closes the wind. 

 Venus in the sky of a moonless night,

a swan in a shimmering lake of dawn,

single on the occult path strewn with specks of light,

the stillness of the mist in a lake without a ripple,

she comes with the dawn, and melts

with the coming of the sun.

For more than a quarter of a year

the Venus shines in the east

only to disappear for long,

and comes back with opulence

once again in the west.

She resonates with lovers.

Her reverberations fall on earth

and brighten her occult path.

As like an angel cursed

she stays for a borrowed interval of time

tossing her mystical rays on the evening sky

in waves of orange, blue and mauve

in the arms of the darkness waiting at the end of the sky.

When the evening arrives, I pray,

: Let the light of Venus stay.

There are innumerable pages yet to be written;

they are fair and blank.

Venus shine; be not dim.

Fear not, faint not, hold up

the lamp which we can dimly see.

Show us beauty, show us sense.

Venus, shine and spread your rays.

Sushama Karnik

May 2020

 Like a jettisoned cargo the mountain let go

the turbulence of water.

Was it too much of a load for the mountain to carry?

And the water leaped in an ecstasy.

All around the edges of the fall were trees and the moss.

Even in that tremendous leap was the sound

of a prelude to a hymn;

a rapid fall and the slowest of of the melodies

that only a waterfall knows how to sing!

And the valley felt the thrill .

A tiger at night, a lone antelope, wolves and jackals

all stood aghast. Oh the sound of water

falling in the valley, sublime and awesome

in the self-same moment of time!

Sushama Karnik.

02/04/2022

Thanks for the image Tighe

Tighe O'Donoghue Ross