Anju Kishore
Continuum
My high-rise balcony looks out over a marshland. My favourite pastime this monsoon is to watch the birds coming in for a peck or a quick splash in the small pools of rainwater.
Today, a duck is gliding across one of the ponds. Soon, I see a small group of men picking their way along the edge of the marsh. From my perch, they look like miniatures. They have a stretcher between them, decked with garlands. The wind carries their drumbeats to me in waves.
Slowly, the party moves towards a walled enclosure by the pond. Gentle curls of smoke from a previous pyre are still rising from inside.
A gate opens and they are lost in foliage. The drums fall silent.
The duck, having swum all the way up the pond, returns slowly.
pulling the sky
from under a moon
another sunrise
About the Author
Formerly a finance professional, Anju Kishore is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a published poet, and an award-winning editor of numerous free-verse anthologies. Her book of poems inspired by the Syrian civil war, …and I Stop to Listen (AuthorsPress, 2018), was well received. Her poems are part of many anthologies and journals.