The lands of foremothers

To stand just once, as my foremothers stood

on humped mud-markers between their paddy rows;

to feel the same earth that once held their shadows,

to dip and drink from that vast solitude

that was once their sky, stop at a ruined shrine

where they knelt; rest in a mango orchard

touched by their work-roughened hands, and nurtured

offhand in leisure, planted without design,

a crude hammock hitched there some monsoon day.

I’ve loved my amber earth as it is, but still

I’d have been a deeper, broader tranquil

had I been able to touch that old pathway.

Yet, all mud’s wind-blown. And as likely true -

soil that dusts my feet might have crumbed theirs too.










I belong to the third generation of a "Partition" family.  My family origins lie in a village that is deep in rural Bangladesh now.  I have this dream of going back there on a visit some day.  

The picture is of a traditional Bengali temple in a 400 year-old rural homestead in West Bengal.