Literary Yard

Search for meaning

By: Rishitha Shetty

oceansong

He stands with one leg,

on the…………ocean’s edge

and

the other

…………on the mountain top.

Woman, man, beast or God-

walk below my thigh, he says.

His head, cushioned in clouds;

his eyelids, a shroud on the fires

…………from the forests lips.

The leg on the mountain,

painted in amber-

showers earth in gray.

With half a leg and one, he

watches the sun

kiss the ocean’s chest.

His charred leg throttles

bulls on earth;

their cry, squeezes tears out of the sky.

The tears wash stone, silk, sand, stream, scripts away.

A green saree blankets floating twigs,

perched on brown waters-

…………caressing sun-baked hips.

There is a tug, at her saree’s edge-

a pull, on her waist-long braid,

a sniff at

…………jasmine on her hair.

She feels none of it

until she reaches home,

to the…………cacophony of bulls!

You have carried a drowning god home, says the priest,

in the jasmine of your hair.

You will feed him horse gram and sugar when the waters

…………rise at the ocean’s edge.

Your name shall live

and wake up to the

song of bulls.

Every first born daughter

of the drowning God’s abode,

will be named ‘Mysandayi’.

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