By: Prathap Kamath

Everyday my window opens into a little patch of paddy
laid to waste.
Some later owner had grown coconut trees there.
All of them turned out to be barren
with mournful, drooping, long, yellowish green leaves.
They all stand on little mounts of soil like islets
on a sunken sea.
No, this poem is not about the coconut trees.
In truth
I don’t know what it is about, for I don’t know
what it is that I look for every morning out my window
in the paddy.
During summer, its yellow loneliness makes me sad.
In spring
I fancy I sighted a breeze casting a wave over the absent
paddy leaves.
And at other times, I fancy I sighted a man in white
standing there like a statue, changing spot each time I
blinked my eyes.

Rains went mad this monsoon. Out of my window
the paddy is a pool
where frogs are doing the ninth symphony.
The water is still.
Black.

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Prathap Kamath is a poet from India. His published works in English are Ekalavya: a book of poems (2012), Blood Rain and Other Stories (2014) and  Tableaux: poems of life and creatures(2017). His poems have been anthologized in The Dance of The Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (Hidden Brook Press, 2013), and published in journals like Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, Journal of Literature and Aesthetics,Chandrabhaga, Muse India, Modern Lietarture etc. He is Associate Professor and Research Guide of English with  University of Kerala.