February 2022
Bio Note: With temperatures dipping below the minus 30s, I find poetry is both easier and harder to write. When I lived and worked in the foothills of the Himalayas, we had no central heating, and when the wood stove died out, we shivered. I am constantly reminded that there is much to be grateful for here, though my spirits can sometimes flag. The excitement of my father's poem together with mine, being selected to be sent to the moon in the Nova Time capsule, prompted me to write the poem 'Moon', while memories of the city of my birth never cease to resurface.
Bombay Monsoon
A box of old photographs
becomes a magician with his tricks
Pulls me out of his hat as a little girl
My hair in two pony tails
The greyness of age covered in curls of gold and brown.
Time places me on the stone steps
of the small rented family home
in pouring rain, listening for the deep-throated croaking
of the frogs, audible but camouflaged
behind the dripping bushes of the lush garden.
My ears fill with the laughter of the street urchins
splashing, pushing cars in the flooded waters
smiling gratitude for a few coins to buy peanuts,
bananas, or any kind of cheap food.
The smell of fresh earth invades the nostrils
and the voice of father calling out
‘Come inside, you’ll get wet.’
I am chasing my paper boat
already sailed away to a distant shore
My hands too small to reach it.
The Bombay rain is heaven opened
God has inundated the earth with his bounty.
I am standing in the pouring rain
No grey in my rain-drenched hair
I leave the box of old photographs open,
The little girl lives inside me and in the box
Only the rain feels a little different here
I long for the rain with the frogs, urchins, and paper boats.
On this distant shore I now call home.
©2022 Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
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