#lockdownpoems

It is now a lockdown ritual to inquire from the wire-net draping my kitchen window as the tea-leaves steep in a russet frenzy & the crows in their raucous haggle for  a stray chicken-bone or khichdi Always the same willowy sang-froid, weathered hands neatening the white kurta the hand -kerchief has graduated to a mask curtaining his face. His hair, a tarn of silver sand. Some eidolic zero, the cynosure of his stare. His body, a paused wave; sheaves of lightning. Does he hear well. In some episodic hallway of flashbacks does a lightbulb still shiver with a half-erased lyric. What underlies the architecture of his vulnerability. In what way does he path his prayers. Are there old coatpockets hiding the scent of a valentine on a ticket -stub. What is the depth of his displacement. How does he measure distances - in a scale summarized by rain, in the rabbity lineament of yellow buttercups. Somewhere. A granddaughter, maybe. Does he hoard the history of her toothless smiles on his phone. Did he ever consider getting a tattoo. Does his melancholic serenity cave in to a blue-bordered insomnia.  What unfurls the silhouette of his stillness. Is his silence a comfort or a collapse.