Freshly-mowed grass fills my lungs
I wonder how long this serotonin surge will last
as I take a breather from living
A graceful prinia pirouettes in the breeze
I follow– a–hopping –mynah– –across
— a– stretch–of –green
Yellow-eyes –fixed
–on -my gravel-crunching –shoes
A jet of cold, hose water separates us
…………………………………………………..soars
I continue on land, he squawks and ∧
A Painted Lady quivers on a lantana floret
The sea breeze changes gears
Sparrows argue noisily in brown groups
then stop to hurl abuse at a bulbul
who hopped too near
Black, orange and a little green
A crow on an African tulip tree
warns everyone “Two-Legs is armed”
Suddenly
I
am
alone
and rejected
but shrug it off
because the bucket is filling up again
There is rippling life in the lazy waters.
The bleeding gulmohars have poured onto the greens
Death is vibrant when you know where to fall
There is a gull framed in an afternoon moon
when the singed humans have slunk away
into concrete shadows,
their opinionated juices all dried up
Droplets
…………. slide
…………………off
………………………a
…………………………..cormorant
He hangs wet wings out to dry
A heron swoops and emerges
with wriggling silver in its death-throes
I suck at these moments
till they explode within the blood
and burst out through stretched skin
The cameras and their human appendages
have fallen off the flaming edges of this summer
for to capture a butterfly for loving it later
within the confines of a memory
with some added effects is to lose it forever
Some days you can’t get me down
merely by throwing plastic cups and half-eaten waste
into the slate gray Corniche waters.
There is a steady rivulet of sweat flowing down my back,
my thighs stick to damp denims but there is a gale in my heart
A baddie passes by yelling something
he learnt from his days in muck
I smile, the serotonin surges further
glad that I am not in a rut
where that mud can splatter me
I am invincible
∫ ∫ ∫ ∫ ∫
hooked on living
©Reena Prasad