March 2021
Neera Kashyap
Neerak7@gmail.com
Neerak7@gmail.com
Bio Note: I tried my hand at Ekphrastic poetry recently - both from a 'viewer's' point of how I
experienced the art, and from a person’s point of view within the art. There is one reputed journal that suggests
as guideline that one writes within the hour. This is how such a poem/prose ought to be written - spontaneously and
swiftly - though I did keep the image of the art piece in my consciousness before sleeping. This poem below is an
ekphrastic poem, modified and developed later.
Colors of the Unconscious
The surface—grey—wooden in its responses
knew there was more to life...
It could not tear its prison’s fence
but let it be torn
through random prayer,
through streams and dreams
from an eternal haunt of ghosts,
rousing a storm of memories and drives
buried and floating.
Intimations too...
till the grey seethed with unknown energies.
The surface knew there was more to life than grey…
so it held on...
through dualities,
through opposing forces
threatening daily rupture,
living as true as it knew...
living to work a way out of the grey.
Finally the dreams revealed...
turning grey to red, red to yellow till
yellow turned translucent,
so shot through with light.
Orange came like the sky after rain
clever as the missing piece
in an insoluble puzzle.
For the colors knew there was no other way
but to outgrow one another—
clever like the vine that works its way
through a stone wall
to reach
for the blue in the sky.
©2021 Neera Kashyap
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author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL