On being sent a photo of a Nepali woman baking clay pots

Clay’s useful only when it’s hollowed out,

fired in unbearable kilns and hardened;

the base level, the shape even throughout,

but it’s fragile still, it'll crack in the end.
The potter breaks, though later than the pot,

and once they’ve broken - difficult to mend -

they could be stuck back, sure, but you cannot

unsee the cracks, the fault lines that’ve opened.



Slowly getting back on track, onward with the teeny-tiny and long titles. Or maybe I should have just called it 'Crackpot' :) 

Will be round to catch up on the reading soon.  Can't believe January's nearly over! Hope 2019 is treating you well.

Empty Waters

The airport is already swankier. Clicketty-click polished granite floors where the carpeting does not deaden footsteps, the concourse wider, an enlarged duty-free, shops glittering with souvenirs – costume jewellery, camels, miniature coffee pots. Sleek kiosks of global brands. Rows of backlit signages, lights reflected off all surfaces like some kind of weird visual echo chamber.

Shaken, not stirred

Over familiar, she leans close, and whispers

as the steam rises from my cup,

‘You babble a lot about death and winters

but sometimes you’re forced to shut up.’

Early morning in the park the crowd is thin

just she and I at my old bench,

the clank of garbage vats, the year’s beginning

with the same noise and urban stench.

‘You can write it lofty when it is just you,’

she smirks, though her lips remain grim,

‘all immortal bravado- what will you do

when it’s not you but it is him?’

The coffee goes cold, and the day, between us.

Overhead a birdsong shrills, a branch shivers.

A rocky start to my 2019 - first a medical emergency in India with my mum on Christmas Day for which I had to travel back, then upon return, another visit to the ER here in Bahrain on account of my husband- scared totally witless! 

Both parties out of hospitals now and recovering at home. Truly grateful for the outcomes and the timely interventions, prayers and support from friends and wider family. 

Hope to be a little more regular with blogging and online life once the offline one teeters back to (the new) normal.  The cup may have gone cold for the moment, but thankfully, I'm being allowed the option of reheating. Staying positive and writing it as it comes, when I can.