Biman Roy
UNTOUCHED BY WINTER
How easily things change
from known to unknowable.
When Mother died, I was not there.
She went alone possibly thinking
about my selfish endeavors.
Water trickled drop by drop
from palm fronds
to open arms of the sandy shore.
All that can’t ascend
night after night
must be sacrificed.
But most people don’t see the shadow
clinging to light.
They hope to recover
From the ordinariness of a common life
like a flight of stairs in one breath.
Left behind are eyes,
like split blue plums
and wind’s infectiousness.
Moon-lashed branches
of a white birch
keep blessing the slanderous night,
as if forever.
Such Quietness!
RETREAT
And this is how the body swings
open the door behind which
another summer, crouched like a leopard
and hung from the top branch my childhood,
to where cool breeze aspires to relocate.
In last night’s dream, “Mother,” I said, “hurry up.”
She opened like a casket full of roses,
turned purple in pain.
When the barn door opened, horses flew like arrows
and I stood motionless until a note, like a brass tack
fell off the horn, shifting the gravity
of the arch of music
and I said, “No, you aren’t dead. See, the wound
is closing its mouth,” and horses are back in ones
and twos,
the same face of the weatherman perched on the roof,
as steps are reversed all the way back to a delta of passion.
Mother, it felt like Jerusalem—
I knew, at the far end, someone would wait
like a drop of water looking for thirst.
Biman Roy's chapbook of prose poems, Of Moon and Washing Machine, was recently published by UnCollected Press, and his poetry chapbook, Dinosaur Hour is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Biman’s writing has been nominated for the Best of the Net and a Pushcart. He enjoys moviemaking, Eastern music, American jazz music, and painting.