By Basudhara Roy

I open the heart’s cage and let fly

a hundred pigeons into the endless sky,

the impatient beating of their wings

a reminder that under the shroud of silence,

life’s restlessness still lives

and the flesh, flawed and frail as it is,

is wooed to raptures

by a single spell of rain.

In my hands are a few grains

of time that I am feeding to love.

In a season of faith, the future holds no fear.

I take all I am given today

without fretting over tomorrow.

This day’s charity, this moment’s leisure

must have a name I ache to utter.

With its quiet glory, I brand my heart.

Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Her recent (second) collection of poems is Stitching a Home (New Delhi: Red River, 2021). She loves, rebels, writes and reviews from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.