Wednesday 6 March 2019


MARCH

by Shikhandin

This is not the season to be alone.
Elements in the air react against skin and heart.
Those soft inner parts that you hid all winter.
It is dangerous to be alone in March.
You can never tell what your eyes will reveal
to a complete stranger at the bus stop or bazaar. Or up the stairs
on your way to the solicitors’ office – what were you doing there
in the first place? This is not the season for lawsuits.
March is not even a season.

March is a licentious beast.
A surreptitious and stealthy time
in the name of such wild feasts
of colours and scents that within your heart
a frantic dove beats its wings and outside
the boney serrated walls, unchained ones caterwaul.
Calling out to all the unclenched spirits
rising up to kiss the full March Moon.

Intellect is brought down to its knobby knees.
Sagacity, caught brooding
between newly un-muffed ears, is doused.
There is much mischief afoot.
For who really knows what spirits will rule
over this flesh that lies fallen, like an over-ripe autumnal fruit?
Madness marches on scattering tidings as yellow as pollen.

Beware! Should you sniff that heady snuff, you will go
wandering. That timid dove within you will,
to your surprise, let out a lusty cry.
Satin sheens of sunlit air will tear
scattering lucent dementia everywhere,
beating wild bacchanalian rhythm. Oh no!
Nothing does or ever will makes sense in March!

Nothing at all, except the moth balls
that you have begun to tuck
inside quilts still smelling of eggnog and cake crumbs
and a whiff of that something that you
had promised yourself at the end of the year.
But even that is not enough for March
in whose unrelenting grasp
your body becomes a chalice, overflowing.
Oh, so sweetly overflowing, in March!


* * * * *

Shikhandin is the nom de plume of an award winning Indian writer, who writes for both adults and children. Books include among others, Immoderate Men: Stories published by Speaking Tiger, India and Vibhuti Cat an illustrated book for children, published by Duckbill. For more on Shikhandin you can visit her Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/author/shikhandin and her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorShikhandin/


3 comments:

  1. I believe I've just lived an entire month, with its mysteries, its sensual passage from poignance to promise.

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  2. Aw we're on the same page here with full moons and wild feasts and beasts :) Wonderful poem!!!

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  3. Thank you Mathew and Oonah, so much. Am very late, so so late in responding. So many things get inn the way. I am so glad Beate and all of you here enjoyed this poem. Means a lot to me.

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