This is not the season to be alone.
Elements in the air react against skin and heart.
Those soft inner parts that you hid all winter.
It is dangerous to be alone in March.
You can never tell what your eyes will reveal
to a complete stranger at the bus stop or bazaar. Or up the stairs
on your way to the solicitors' office – what were you doing there
in the first place? This is not the season for lawsuits.
March is not even a season.
March is a licentious beast.
A surreptitious and stealthy time
in the name of such wild feasts
of colours and scents that within your heart
a frantic dove beats its wings and outside
the boney serrated walls, unchained ones caterwaul
calling out to all the unclenched spirits
rising up to kiss the full March Moon.
Intellect is brought down to its knobby knees.
Sagacity, caught brooding
between newly un-muffed ears, is doused.
There is much mischief afoot.
For who really knows what spirits will rule
over this flesh that lies fallen, like an over-ripe autumnal fruit?
Madness marches on scattering tidings as yellow as pollen.
Beware! Should you sniff that heady snuff, you will go
wandering. That timid dove within you will
to your surprise, let out a lusty cry.
Satin sheens of sunlit air will tear
scattering lucent dementia everywhere,
beating wild bacchanalian rhythm. Oh no!
Nothing does or ever will makes sense, in March!
Nothing at all, except the moth balls
that you have begun to tuck
inside quilts still smelling of eggnog and cake crumbs
and a whiff of that something that you
had promised yourself at the end of the year.
But, even that is not enough for March
in whose unrelenting grasp
your body becomes a chalice, overflowing.
Oh, so sweetly overflowing, in March!
© 2009 Rumjhum Biswas
March
