Birds on the Edge of a City

We went to watch birds
in the backwaters of Chennai.
Left-over ocean in brackish lakes
where the water hyacinth is
slowly squeezing-out its living air,
where rushes of wild reeds
hold on to residues of smoke
from exhausts of cars on the highway.

Holding on to what ought to have been let go.
Held on by what has nowhere else to go.

But even in this we find a small paradise.
On an island of mud and rocks – an acacia tree.
On its branches – egrets and cormorants,
dipping pin tails swimming close by.
Purple herons swoop in, and overhead –
a scoop of pelicans fly.

Driving back, we stop at the Koovum river
not speaking of the effluents it carries
– the sins of others, not dredging bottoms,
not holding grudges. We see
one dead fish and a sunset painted in storks.

Borne by some conviction that survives
the poison of our city, the birds come back
to perch on its edges.

Their magnificence at odds with our nature
like the flapping of goose wings in wooden clappers
like the wound-up cuckoo bird on a short spring.