August 2020
Neera Kashyap
Neerak7@gmail.com
Bio Note: : I have worked on health and social communications. For several years I have been an itinerant writer of short fiction, poetry, essays and book reviews. Of late, poetry has sort of gripped me after a series of webinars with Marj Hahne, an American poet and teacher. I have recently contributed haiku and haibun to an anthology of Indian poetry published by Erothanatos and to another anthology titled ‘Hibiscus’ on poems that heal and empower. The Estrangement poems below deal with both its tender aspect and the anxiety generated when we feel estranged from our core selves.

Estrangement - Restful

First it was his presence.
Now even the thought of him holds
the tangible fragrance of a clove flower.
Intangibly, his is the charge of a dynamo -
a magnetic field radiating spatial heat.   
If I feel it he must feel it too.
I don't steal a glance for if I did he would know.

Thoughts of him crowd in more randomly:
His stained shirtfront - does he gorge like a hamster?
His stricken hair - does he weather squalls?
His mellow voice - does he play the flute in filigrees of wind?
His sideward look - does he warm the earth like a sunbeam?
Thoughts turn, titillate, taper…
The charge remains as does the fragrant possibility
of recognition, of restraint -
of an estrangement content in itself.

Estrangement - Angered

Anger at the world feels a lesser estrangement than 
anger at myself.
The bubble and foam of a sea spitting fish 
trapped in blue plastic choked in nylon netting.

Anger at my pride is mixed with glee in my generosity. 
Mid ocean currents trapped in seabed ridges mix to
create tidal waves beneath. No roar on the surface; 
waves only a few inches high move smoothly to the shore -
changing climate, changing whole ecosystems.

In shallow reaches waves shorten, gathered energy impelling
them to rise - spitting and crashing noisily onto shores. 
Mid-ocean is tidal underneath; it does not calm.
Mixed currents still spit anger onto shores.

What if I could break this mixture that estranges?
Peel off layers and layers of myself like an onion.
Feel the empty space and wait…. 
Or just launder the gagging smell with steel and water.
©2020 Neera Kashyap
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