21
The country song in another tongue
drags me in, and I join, hoot and bray.
I do not know what the song conveys.
The evening rolls long, and although grey
dominates it displays streaks of colours
that remind you of your closed-door shivering;
first mensuration stained underwear and
your mother. Perhaps it is the song.
Perhaps because you have heard me
singing craps and singing happy never before.
And then there flows the shining country liquor.
22
The odd hummingbird returns
in that same evening – the first evening
in the new town, house, year –
inside your underwear.
Sometimes your man is not near
He sits in another dark room amidst
some packed and some unpacked boxes
waiting by the window for the shadows
finally learning to lasso in the entire mountain.
Miles apart, both the places shiver in cold.
23
The water, invisible and streaming,
sirens me out of the reverie
every early morning,
and I step outside, my hands bracing,
stand in the rented yard in this
one month old town (for me)
yawning and yearning to find
the source rivulet, finding none
as if the noise of the rill
and the cacophony of its
half smoothed pebbles
tell the tales of an island hidden in
my dazed consciousness.
I have given up on the people failing
to identify the din – even they can listen
to it when they stand near me.
No runnel runs here. Rain has not been
a regularity in the town
for the most part of the year for
years and years.
The trouble I bear, sometimes wonder
if this is not my mother crying
because I cannot and I need to be.
I imagine, by the next week I shall learn
to water-whisper, say, “Whoah. Calm down.
I have all the dopamine you need.
Wolfpack Contributor: Kushal Poddar
A Poetry Series by Kushal Poddar “Hiraeth Series”
Fevers of the Mind 
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