Two poems

Oasis

That summer the sun was so harsh

that the brittle carpet of greying leaves

were turning to pits of azure ash.

We waited for the mellow sea-breeze

to whistle in memories of monsoon, as we

swarmed the steamy nights to sleep.

In the chapel, the bells rasped with prayer

Our Latin figments of ora pro no vis

at Mary’s womb, from whom the village had spawned.

When the festoons of annual feast were ground

to char, along the hot red-brick earth beside

the Church, our last agonies to Her were spent.

Outside, the fields were mourning with our sticky tears,

the awning wells were suckled off their moisture,

the trees were falling asleep to still-born noons

and the hungry sand bit our feet like an iron-smith’s hearth.

We were drying up like the washing over huckleberry thorn.

Father said if this went on we would have to leave.

The city breathed at us through its black-coke spires

tar broke at every step from the sun’s merciless glare

gasping vehicles burst upon the shallow air with grease and fume

the teacher in the school turned our attention to the plume.

Still the fires of our worries stung our blue-pickled notes

For, it was only mother who was left to fill our water ration.

But there was such spirit within her soul, so she never showed

to what extent she went to keep us smiling and whole.

Communion

That Sunday before lent, the sound of my catechism

had convinced the priest that I was ripe

to receive Jesus Christ in my life.

It was time to turn out old adages through the cat-flap

of my mind, the anxiety that sinfulness would be seen

through the bifocals of the Holy See.

He received me with a benevolent nod, as I kissed

his deep-blood ruby, my pale face lit from the candle

festooned for my own incandescence.

Innocence lay among the lilies of my silken shirt.

Suddenly, I was touched by a light so solid

that it shown through my eyes.

But it was merely a stroke of lightning.

God’s word wrote on Moses’ sheet-hewn stone

below, the world kept pace with its

urban ramblings.