VANDANA KUMAR

VANDANA KUMAR

THE SUMMER THAT WAS….

The month of May mocks me

And asks me

Where are those summer flowers that poets spoke of?

What of the tree that gave the historic voyager his shade?

Who axed its branches and gifted us this concrete maze…

Those fluttering breezes are now the stuff of folklore

Those languid midsummer nights

Where nervous lovers explored new contours

Those homemade lemon khus sorbets

And stolen beals and jamuns

Where vanished the lazy charpoy?

And nocturnal gossip on terraces…

I have no answers for a baffled May

A lame apology for this urban jungle

Sans verdant green lush

As the sun flirts on the western horizon

My temples throb with pain

Longing for an Indian summer of yore

I make my way home

YET ANOTHER FALL

I remember that season with you

It was our favorite time of the year

There I was – quoting Proust

And there you were – watching me

Riveted by the scarlet canvas

We created a rhapsody on the bed of orange

Crunchy and rustling was our passion

Just like those leaves

The air was nippy

The forest on fire

I remember the winter being ‘close enough yet far’

A little like what we have become today.

Come the month of shifting seasons

Another autumn will waltz in

And that for the record will be –

Yet ‘Another Fall’ without you

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

A brave set of dos and don’ts

For us newly ‘lovers turned friends’

We signed on the imagined dotted line

Only to delude ourselves

For every chance encounter thereafter became

A throwback to our past

Every ‘hello’

Pregnant with foreplay

Every ‘goodbye’

Lacerated the skin

When all words failed

We were still visible somewhere

In each other’s pauses

How blinded were we

Not to see

That you and me

Would forever be…

Unfinished business.

VANDANA KUMAR

VANDANA KUMAR is a bon vivant who loves travelling, working with young minds and exploring  possibilities beyond the ordinary. A French teacher and an active member of various quiz clubs, her passions include playing the piano. She contributes poems regularly to magazines like GloMag and has been published in a couple of anthologies. One of her poems was shortlisted and published by the “All India Poetry Society” (All India 2017 poetry competition). Poetry for her is her stress buster, her flight of fancy and strangely, what keeps her rooted too.