PREETH GANAPATHY - POEMS

Preeth Ganapathy's writings have appeared before in a number of online magazines including Mothers Always Write, Willawaw Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review and Young Ravens Literary Review. She is also the winner of Wilda Morris’s July 2020 Poetry Challenge. Currently, she works as Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax in Bangalore, India.  

Grandma
​

​her face fills the fluorescent screen
of my phone as I chat with her
across the geographies of time
 
I see the wrinkles lining her face,
like deep ravines holding years
of accumulated wisdom
 
I see new spots on her skin,
footprints that experience leaves behind on the
shifting sands of old age
 
she waves her hand at me
hands that once picked jasmine flowers of joy
out from a thorn bed of struggles
and knotted them into a sweet smelling garland for my hair
 
I hear her sprightly voice,
one which lulled me to sleep 
on many a nights of loud thunder and blinding lightening
 
smell of firewood and taste of warm milk flows
through my veins just like the uninvited tears
that threaten to flood my eyes
 
I hear the creak of the door as my sleepy toddler ambles in
his eyes light up with the unabated excitement
of meeting his great grandmother on screen 
 
all I want is for both of us to run upto her
once the fearful boundaries that the virus has erected
is reduced to rubble, without the barriers of masks and sanitisers
 
until then it is back to video calls
amidst flying kisses and virtual hugs
across the geographies of time 

Dwellings
​

​The cityscape crowded with dwellings
white and grey, pastel trims and pink spray
Huddled, one beside the other
Breathing the smell of acrimony together
 
Spaces visible
Only amongst those that spire up
Into the stratosphere
 
Rust speckled ladders overhead lead to
Black water tanks amidst mobile towers
sprouting like flowers amongst a host of weeds
 
Cable, electric and telephone -
Metal and plastic wires
jut out, connecting wall to wall
like inverted parabolas
 
The green from the once lush tree cover
Reduced to a mere smattering
Of plants in red earthen pots
Lining red tiled terraces
 
Cries of a lone eagle circling around
And the occasional tremolo of the cuckoo
Seem to ask ‘what about social distancing?’
Their voices are drowned out by horns, noise and din
 

A Morning Walk
​

​Dreams from a purpled sky
Disintegrate like mist
Under the warm glint of sunlight

I wake up gently
To a malleable present
Ringing with the tremolo of a cuckoo

Soft grass curls beneath bare feet
Wind whistles with the scent
Of coffee blossoms and pepper vines

Steps become lighter, lilt more pronounced
In this realm of stillness
and silent freedom                         

A quaint little temple
Nestled in the red hibiscus grove
Has trident gleaming in the open courtyard

The vagrant mind is clear
Like the cobalt waters of a placid pond 
I know, now, a poem will soon be born
 

Meaning of White Noise
​

​Typewriter keys clatter as the cuckoo drips melody
Asserting itself over the beats of electronic music
Suffusion of sounds in the pressure cooker of ear
Disconnected from that nerve reaching the brain
Suffusion of sounds in the pressure cooker of ear
Asserting itself over the beats of electronic music
Typewriter keys clatter as the cuckoo drips melody
 

On Being Different
​

​We get inured to changes however unpleasant they are - getting wet in the rain, admiring the first of snow showers along the bulge of the equator, where there should have been none, breathing in raspy air through the small pores of the masks, to ward off pollution first and now the virus. This capacity of human beings is truly remarkable.
But I am different, not adjustable like a malfunctioning clasp on a purse that neither holds nor gives way, stuck in operation, hanging mid way. That is why, maybe I see the rainbows but gloss over the clouds, I see the water but not the reflection.