Another Year Fading By
Photo by GRAS GRÜN on Unsplash

A noon kettle sings

through my seafoam ears

all the way across the ridges of heavy eyes

How this hour, this pitch

resounds in hissing spectres

of a piping-hot prayer

concocted in collusion

with the still-burning ash of a cigarette

tossed into a bright chimney

too dark and dank on the inside

for Santa to have crawled in

Birds of viridian plume

have vanished from my window sill

into forever commas trailing

across a hardbound monochrome sky

The days stretch so much and so little

before we’ve learned to kiss good-bye

to the last poems that we’ve culled

from a heaving history of nothings

holding on tight

to every version

of what we are and will be

— the same

yet every bit the change

we don’t want to see.
['Shalini C']
['Year In Review', 'Introspection', '2020', 'Poetry Sunday', 'Cynicism']