Songs of Anisha
“Notes Written On Friday and Saturday,”
by Abigail George
This is just about a small poem
that can be carried in a fist.
It has its own adrenaline rush.
Its own peaks and troughs.
This is to remind me about
a great woman. My mother
who was once my father’s sweetheart.
My mother who was once
my maternal grandmother’s
daughter. Now we stand behind
her and the survival of a house
complete with family life.
Dissecting history, the details of it swathed
in a fog and the grains of
which are caught in a storm.
She gardens. She’s sly. She’s warm to the touch.
What was she like at my birth?
Happy? Satisfied? She likes being
close to nature. She is at ease
in that environment. Vulnerable
to the exposure of the sun,
the rain and the elements. Yet,
there are times when her eyes
seem to glint and say that I am
in an old woman’s way and my mother’s
silence is like a ritual that seems
to fret, glide and swim across
the bridges of sad wishes. The
edges of awkwardly built streets
and alleyways. Their physics
and chemistry and I think to myself
even her ancestors must be
something bigger than I am.
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