A dedication on Father’s Day

On the occasion of Father’s Day, this poem is Lopamudra’s small dedication to the bond that her daughters share with their father, her husband, and to her childhood, that comes back, in spurts.

What are those tender hands that wrap around the dense, hairy chest?

What are those lush gardens of milky love, lighting up dark rooms?

What are those words that sprout from untainted young lips,

The milk, the silken stockings, the crushed petals of lullabies

Tossed and turned over, crooning, as I purse my parched lips,

Savouring, swallowing the scene, the bond and the primal hum

Fading, resounding?

In the night when you cocoon them in the blanketed warmth,

The tangible shelter of a comforter, and the single syllable, ‘sleep’,

You tie them with your sinew and blood.

At dawn, when your bodies swirl together,

You fill them with unsung songs. I melt in them,

Tears lurking, that have died in their tracks.

In time, I have been the porcelain pottery,

Lines etched in, molten, unfinished, crackling, hissing.

My childhood, a hieroglyphic, stumbling out

Of my own torn baggage, languishing for a face that gleams,

‘Father’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Dad’, ‘Papa’, a sunlit yard, the freckles

Of white dust that lay, scattered, spilling over, in spurts.

I have nourished all my flames, indelible marks, the coughs

And the rising and falling bile that had made me too, a daughter,

Stacking the bricks, the frozen, blue whims, that had made me one.

My voice screeches, a flat tire, unheard,

The hiccups of failed conversations echo in a happy, painted room.

It’s the Father’s Day, a lump in my throat sings wild.

©Lopa Banerjee

Pic from Net.

Lopamudra Banerjee

Lopamudra Banerjee is a multi-talented author, poet, translator, and editor with eight published books and six anthologies in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She has been a featured poet at Rice University, Houston (2019), ‘Life in Quarantine’, the Digital Humanities Archive of Stanford University, USA. Her recent translations include ‘Bakul Katha: Tale of the Emancipated Woman’ and ‘The Bard and his Sister-in-law’.