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Water has memory, Poems from NaPoWriMo 2022 Day Sixteen


The blue by JakezDaniel

Rivery (Reverie) by Erfana

Ripples, oysters and fishermens' hats

We were river colours back then

Moving to and fro

Always wanting to dive into the waters

Never knowing how


Inside the river we found words

We counted birds and crabs and

Kept safe the grey-green karimeen

For fishers with fishing rods

And waited for the blue boat

Till it came


Toes soaked in the water she asked

"What if I jump into the river

With my frock on?"

And I said

"It would look beautiful

The frock

Flying into and out of it"


And she jumped in

The next moment

Like the river

For a long time

Was waiting for her to


And I took a photo of it

Her green frock

Growing all over the river

Like our watercolours

Or their fishing net

I know not


But it looked beautiful

And the river won't forget that ever

I thought


I held in my hand

The photo

Cause she loves photographs

Of flying floating things

And left for home

Alone and I wrote


Ripples, oysters and fishermens' hats

We were river colours back then

Moving to and fro

Always wanting to dive into the waters

Never knowing how


Jal samadhi by Ayushi Saha

Put one cup of water

For every two cups of milk

Else the chai will turn watery

Watery as the pillows

Which have sponged out

Old lovers, old friends, old songs

Old wounds that have been wrung dry

Squished out like damped towels

And hung on the city’s cloth lines

Alongside pigeons resting on hanging cable wires

Water that can drown

Schools of fishes and thoughts alike

Water in our blood

In our muscles

On our skins

And in puddles and street manholes

Water in our air

Water in our breath

In our brethren

Have memories

Muscle memories taking shape

Of the containers we put

In the first place

Muscle memories that have/speak volumes

Regardless of the containers, we fit them in

A slow drizzle

Across the curtains

A warning-sign

A well-read threat

Is water droplets slowly peppering kisses on afternoon curtains

As hostel/ hostile rains drop by

Scurrying feet scuffling

Light as a feather

Fettering fleeting fleeing

Hearts hung on a clothesline

Now damped dizzy drowning

As the city and all its girls

Twirl and twist

Clamping their feet/clothespin

Clawing their nails into

Wet soil/silk linen

Drench and dip

Dip and drown

Having tasted casualties

On thirsty tongues

Where memories of waters

Swap

swaddle

Saddle

Reining control over rains

As tongues twin with stillborn cities

Both alight ablaze aflame

Both sinking over like a revered idol, like Venice

a gruesome kali red.


I Don't Understand This Metaphor by Mayukh Dutta

As I descend from the tiring illusions of the day

And reconcile with myself on quarrels born of fatiguing hours

I find myself flowing like the river near my town

Slicing through my land, water bearing wisdom for all mortal queries.

Water has memory

The emissary of our ancestors in rivers whose land it brought and washed away

The conveyor of nature in rain proclaiming its might over brittle human existence

The book of myself in me, my blood and my tears flowing with pieces from my heart.


There is a manner in which water makes its way

Our pasts remembered through the paths they chose

We have been followers of a divergent force

Our Gods were born of the same elements our famines broke.

But water is 'my' metaphor:

The fluidity emanating from my bones

The surprising turns exclaiming my accidents of existence

The place where I dive for myself but drown instead

Water is my soul experiencing tides so high that it hits the rocks while searching for the shore.

And therefore, is my memory

Flowing, lost, happening, forgotten

Like birds during an orange sunset-

Taking flight in a rhythm while bargaining their place to rest

The flock painting the skies but

only in a momentary state of being.


Water remembers

All eyes that shed tears for the flesh they lost while light pierced through them,

The brotherhood of man that devoured on each other's dreams instead,

The innocence of the peasant whose prayers for sustenance begin before the break of dawn,

The silence of the soul that sits on the banks while the river is his crying heart,

The depths of ours, often darker than the depth of this sea.

Water is liberation

A symbolic statement of letting go,

But because water is so effortless

Becomes the reason for our incapacity to realize

That water is our pasts weaved into a fabric

The strings holding us while we hold a burning torch

This relentless flow will continue to weave

As we burn what we don't understand.


 



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