Sangeeta’s poem, exclusively for Different Truths explores the chaotic beauty of the sky before a storm. blending playful and menacing scenes, evoking various emotions.

Post a tornado-forecast
The smoky grey thunderous clouds look scary
Like abusive relationships causing inner turmoil-making life awry
While the sunlit side of the sky, vie
The playful, peeping, ruddy sun playing hide and seek
Like kids hiding behind the tree
And then, when caught, jumping and laughing with glee
Firmament: fragmented, frothy, and speckled
Its hues, the texture, the pace
Make the people feel bouncy and stimulate
Or petrified or postulate
Pregnant with manifold images and thoughts
A new design, for each set of eyes, a new canvas
Sometimes, like angry rolling waves, cottony rugs and
sometimes like marble pillars and rocks
In the blink of an eye, palaces
Or utopian terraces
Fathomless, foaming, freezing, drooping and ameliorating
They beguile and stun
With their splendour and stimulation!

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Dr. Sangeeta Sharma

Dr. Sangeeta Sharma, a Toronto-based academic, is the Senior Editor of Setu, a bilingual, international peer-reviewed journal and former head, English, in a degree college affiliated to the University of Mumbai. She has authored a book on Arthur Miller, two collections of poems, edited six anthologies on poetry, fiction, and criticism (solo and joint) and two workbooks on communication. Currently, she hosts Setu’s Limited Video Series of Literary and Critical Conversations available on YouTube.

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