Evanescence

White canvases in the noon

Hanging from the cloth-lines

A peg in her lips, pegs in my little palms

Spot a floral-print petticoat

Follow it around

Long black hair, streaks of red

Glowing purple in the evening sun

Blowing in the wind

Stroking a dandelion

Holding on for dear life

Red scars, purple bruises

Wet tears, funny tasting

Pain-stricken, I lay in bed

Dreams find me, when I am awake

A blanket spread over my head

Years fade out of existence

A bad dream, into the white void

Slowly wake up to find

An empty cloth-line

No pegs in my hands

Naked dandelion buds

Dead wind, still air

No sun, no flower scented hair

The only remnant of us

Are dark blue scars

I hear a hymn in the distance

Through a broken windowpane

So tell me now, again

Where did we go wrong, Ma,

If our story never began?

Copyright Delilah Das 

What Must Happiness be?

(Captured in my mother's garden): 
Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.
- Robert Frost

'Tis nothing but to see ants rise and fall,

Meet and talk and run amok,

To sit in the shade and watch a day

In the life of a roadside rock.

To hear the green beetles with the

Pretty red specks pulsate and say:

Watch if you will; there’s work to be done

Till the end of this nice long day.

To watch a strange bird look about

And wonder what it thinks,

Of the shallow rain and the little grains

And muddy puddles for drinks.

And eagerly welcome the wind as though

It has brought your mail,

For the mailman may or may not arrive

But the wind will never fail.

To see birth, death, the hunter and

Hunted, ceaselessly persist,

And wasps that feed off yellow leaves

That sunshine once had kissed.

'Tis nothing but at end of day to smell

Like rain soaked dirt,

'Tis what happiness must be, 'tis the

Fluttering in your heart.

Copyright Delilah Das