Cicadas
In the evening, they alight on the bark’s
tarmac, loud and clear.
I scour the lines of the silver-oak,
for their scent.
After seventeen searing seconds,
I am about to turn away
satisfied with the tang of their fervent
metallic songs until,
one tiny frame
shivers like a newborn flame.
Before dawn, they assemble again, sing their songs,
laced with the freshness of dew and air,
from the edge of a single Mussaenda petal,
from behind an Arabica coffee stem,
from between the cracks of the cement courtyard,
from beyond the delicate hills and the thin mist,
calling out
to Light.
Stay
The sun is like the air –
calm on the skin, but not seen.
The garden glows green,
my son is on the swing,
the one with the blue paint peeling off the seat,
clasping the rust-coated side chain.
A big smile stretched on his face, mid-flight,
singing feathery songs to the morning light.
After some time, I call out softly, tell him it is time to leave,
before his eyebrows furrow,
before he can shake his head,
a dragon-fly hovers,
her black paper wings flutter,
and she carefully selects one of the lines of my open palm
and perches
for the moment.
Like a gracious host
she whispers
‘stay’.
Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines such as The Ekphrastic Review, Soul-Lit, The Sunlight Press, Atlas+Alice, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Mothers Always Write, Tiger Moth Review and elsewhere. Her microchap, A Single Moment, has been published by Origami Poems Project. She is also a two-time winner of Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge.
Sparks of Calliope 