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| Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca |
Social Distancing
in Animals and Plants
Two squirrels
Running the fence length
In my backyard
Playing chase as squirrels do,
Tail of squirrel One
Touching nose
Of squirrel Two.
Two robins
Bathing in the Bird bath
Two beaks drinking
From the same fountain
Red breasts
Splashing feathers everywhere.
Flamingoes flocking
Near Mumbai waters
Pink reflections,
Parrots visiting
High rises in my birthplace
On seventeenth floor window sills,
Peacocks dancing in the streets
‘Like nobody’s watching.’
Goats taking over
Deserted Welsh town,
A kangaroo hopped down a street
In an Australian city.
A bamboo plant by my bay window
Wraps itself
Around the rubber plant
Fearlessly
My cats
Roll into a wool ball
And bathe each other
With their tongues.
And we stayed home
And drew Zentangles
Andwrote Poetry.
The migrants have fled
Leaving the city streets empty
The animals will return to their homes
At nightfall
Where is home for they
Who sleep on train tracks
Because they thought no train was coming?
Breakfast at Sunrise
At
the top of the mountain
The
sun has a natural birth
The
clouds have easy labor
To
bring it forth,
To
tip with golden tints
The
distant snow-capped Himalayas
A
joyous re-birth to celebrate
Easter.
Those
days we were sure-footed
As
mountain goats,
Leaping
from stone to stone.
No
matter how steep the trek
Uphill.
Spurred
on by the enticing smells
Of
breakfast cooking
By
skilled hands,
But
more eager to pay
Our
homage to the Easter sun
We
made our climb of joy
To
praise the Creator.
Stopping
in stillness
To
see a pair of pine martens
One
solicitously waiting with concerned peering,
Looking
down the path
To
watch that the other was within sight
Not
moving forward till the comforting
Brown-gold
fur of his partner was visible,
Lessons
for us humans.
We
made the yearly trek
A
little slower, as our bodies slowed.
Man
is a creature of rituals and rhythms,
Of
devotion to the familiar,
The
comfortable, the natural.
Now,
though with different mountains
The
smells of breakfast
Memories
of crisp shivering
In
the mountain air
And
the sun through dappled leaves
Is
resurrected in present moments
Whenever
Easter rolls around.
Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca was born in Bombay to Prof. Nissim Ezekiel and Daisy
Ezekiel. She was raised in a Bene-Israel
Jewish family in Bombay, India. She attended Queen Mary’s School, St. Xavier’s
College, Bombay University and Oxford Brookes University, U.K. She holds
Bachelor’s and Masters’ Degrees in English, American Literature and
Education. Her career spanned over four
decades in Indian colleges, American International Schools and Canada, teaching
English, French and Spanish. She also held the position of Career Counsellor at
the International School in India, where she taught Advanced Placement and
other courses in English for sixteen years.
She is a published poet. Her
first book, ‘Family Sunday and other Poems,’ was published in 1989, with
a second edition in 1990. She has read her poems over All India Radio Bombay,
and her poems have also appeared in Poetry India, SETU Magazine, Muse India and
Destiny Poets, UK, to name a few.She has her poetry page at https://www.facebook.com/kemendoncapoetry. Kavita also writes short fiction. Her work is strongly influenced by her
father’s work. (The late Nissim Ezekiel
was an eminent poet, well-known in India and overseas). She lives in Calgary,
Canada, with her family.
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