MAP MAKING by Nandini Dhar

A lightning – delicate as a baby’s severed thumbs,

had melted the red petals last night. A

metaphor of desolation would demand,

that I make the birds leave – one by one. Yet,

they claim – this quiver –

the tip of the shivering coconut leaves,

a new kind of green unsullied by dust, car-fumes.

In this return, is a new legend: of unnoticed

shedding of blood, of death

lurking in the touch of another.

I am counting the days –

between one prison sentence

to the next. The entrance to this alleyway

has been blocked, the factory-yards

are shrinking,

and will shrink

until the walls

clamp down on your fingers.

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Poetry at Sangam