Constituent Parts

 

Within me you'll find my parents

and in me you'll find my sons,

you'll find them all everywhere in me

but they're not the only ones.

There are folks too that you'd never know -

friends, and strangers I've met just once.

For we aren't only our forefathers.

And we're not just our descendants.

The houses that I've ever lived in

continue to live in me.

The beaches I've picked seashells from

shop fronts I've looked at longingly.

The woods I've walked, the glory of stars,

the shadow of bird and tree.

For we're not just folks that are in us,

we are all that we hear and see.

The sum of my whole's never equalled

the sum of my constituent parts.

Each word I wrote and then scratched out,

every stumble and all false starts.

The half done poems that missed a beat,

the stories that made me fall apart.

For we come to be all that we've loved,

everything that's nailed to our hearts. 

 

Saffron, white and green are the colours of the Indian flag. Here today because 26th January is celebrated as Republic Day in India, to commemorate the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 and so completing the transition to a sovereign republic nation, where everyone has an equal chance at happiness and freedom. One of the many important things drilled into me by family elders, teachers and even random strangers sometimes. Nailed to the heart in short.

Happy Republic Day to all Indian citizens. May democratic values prevail across the world and in India always. 

Traditions

I fear I am a poet, tradition bound

to mostly ignore systems – documents -

though I’ll use paper to scribble around

to hold onto some meanings, and moments.

I do use paper, I will freely admit

and I don’t abhor the screen, I’m using one -

but some nerve rebels if I’m asked to show it.

I won’t comply. That too is tradition.

You see, paper’s fragile. Identity

is carried somewhere else, in the stories

of foremothers travelling from one city

to the next, braiding streams, estuaries.

Through many rivers, borders, crisscrossed lands;

tradition too, the tangling of those strands.