Saraswati Puja

filled with golden stalks of grain,
the intoxicating spring winds
hover in the afternoon harvest of desires.
I smell of earth,
escaping from the corridors of ancestral memories,
offering flowers to celestial effigies
of Brahma’s daughter.

I see her,
sitting with folded hands in the pink marbled light,
consumed by itself.
remember me like a child who knows nothing—
I melt at the edge of blossoming spring,
weaving threads of my own pastoral body,
anticipating the ecstasies of seasons,
age after age.

beams of floral sunlight shiver
in the shifting flame of joys like young lovers,
stealthily studying scripts of flowering botanical love
in the crowded pandals.
I slowly breathe the molten afterglow,
surrendering to autumnal rapture
between her eyelashes.

I wait for the night—
a girl in a black satin dress,
smudges of turmeric on her brow,
silently vanishing into my luminous dusky skin!

(for Bina Sarkar di and her memories of Saraswati Puja)