Migrancy

By Mini Babu

Children gathered leaves, peacock feathers

and chocolate wraps,

and left between pages.

The leaves shed their green,

the feathers persisted in-situ

and the chocolate wraps lost shine.

That was what my mother and

her mother and all mothers did.

Later on, when they dwelt on roots,

they mused on leaves, feathers and wraps.

A migrant deserts his shadow

in the village of his childhood,

villagers cut through it and walk around,

when a mate or an acquaintance

or an enemy cuts through,

he turns tender,

as a leaf, a feather, a wrap.

Migrancy is, "the unbearable lightness of being, "

at what place, you trade yourself,

still incapable to do away with the traded,

you swing around, round and round,

to get rid of the traded,

only to come upon it reverting

as blood spots to Lady Macbeth's hands.

Every time you detach your roots,

it bleeds,

as Earth first bled on original sin,

native as of Adam's,

and that which sticks as grass to the soil,

every rain, waters it to flourish.

By Mini Babu