POETRY BY SHARMILA MITRA

Sharmila Mitra, resident of Kolata, India, is a former high school teacher. She has two collections of poetry to her credit, Makeshift Melodies and Starlight Trail. She is working at a third collection of her most recent poetry. She regularly posts her poetry to her own Facebook timeline, X, and has short videos of poetry-reading on Instagram.

She is an amateur artist, mainly posting her work to Facebook. However, she has an online art gallery HERE

You can find Sharmila on facebook HERE

A SONG FOR THE BONES

Like ear-buds
pitifully thin
and white bones
lean against
one another
almost fossilized 
feelings in
susurration 

A little soil
and leaf mulch
even some debris
from crumbled
sentiments
stick to them—

the hungry owl
having devoured
a pair of rats
squeaking out
less than a minute
under the mawkish moon.

The soil under
the wind-swept leaves
is soaked with
end-of-winter rain
and there rises
a great chanting
from under 
grassy mounds,
“Give us back those bones
and keep them safe
from haggard cranes.”

I guess it is the dark soil;
house of old bones
that wants the thin bones
picked clean by 
what creatures I don’t know,
so that rich new flowers
spring up like mad in spring. 

TITULAR DARK PLACE

Oh yes yes yes.
Night,
turn me
into a tree
all gnarled dark

arms and hands
twisting around
me

a dark tree
in a dark place
that seems safest

THE BLANK VERSE OF LETTING WILD ROSES GROW               

There must be showers of beautiful rain
Helping ripening rose buds open up
To smell the air and taste the cool rain drops.

Winter has given way to another spring
You too should shower in the coming change
Woman, make way for joy in your own soul.

As you are waking up from the long sleep
That brought you nothing but incomplete dreams
Poet, go to the wild roses for joy.

Gather the rain-wet wild roses right now
Before the last night takes away your sight
Gather as many as your dress can hold
So that no one can say that you left crying.

Before you leave let the scent of wild roses
Linger in the air even if the roses
Are blown away by the gusts of strong wind
And you let your empty hands clutch the sky.