It Wasn’t Time to Go

Now, two years after spending 5 days in the ICU, and a tough recovery period, I finally had the courage to submit my work to literary journals. Knowing I didn’t have the emotional strength to handle rejections, I had to wait. This month three poems found homes—thanks to Loch Raven Journal, Beltway Poetry Journal and Passager. And thank you to my writer groups who kept me going with their love and encouragement. Happy belated Thanksgiving to all my friends everywhere!

Here’s the poem accepted by Beltway Poetry Journal.

Lalita Noronha

Bound

As I lie on a gurney in the emergency room,
my mind slips into another sphere,
a quiet place with no air, no need to breathe.

The planets swirl about me ─
Jupiter and her four moons,
but it is Europa’s voice I hear first,
a spinning shell of ice
sunlight bouncing off cracks.

Around me voices fade,
leaf-green gowns pale under my eyes,
and bands of dark birds,
geese or song birds,
fly in V formations.

I hear their call.
The air off their wing tips will lift me.
I don’t have to fly.

Dusk deepens, the sky cobalt-blue,
threads of daylight weave through.
Last chance, the last flock calls,

but my last inhale
is trapped within a space
where rain drops aren’t yet snow,
water’s not yet steam,
love’s not yet eternal.

Someone asks me something,
I answer binding.
I hear someone shouting, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.

I open my eyes,
see my child at my side,
holding me down.

http://www.beltwaypoetry.com/bound/.

Aren’t we ALL Immigrants or Descendants of Immigrants in America?

Among the many issues plaguing our country today, Immigration is firmly rooted in the American milieu.

I often think of how I came to the U.S as a young girl of 23, who had never seen the inside of an airplane, and had no place to live in (the dorms were full) and no money to live on. I found a place to live with a family close to my university— doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen each evening after lab work, and on weekends I took care of four children aged 2 to 8, in addition to a few other chores in exchange for room and board. Within that first semester, I could send money home. I had come on a Fulbright Travel Grant which was my ticket to America — the only possible way to get here. At JFK airport, where I had to change planes, I stood in awe watching a “moving stair case” and thought, “My God, what a country!” Then I rode the escalator a few times 🙂

And now, while I dearly love India, the country I was born in, I love America just as much. There are no limits to Love and Gratitude.

The poem below is from my poetry book, “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems”

IMMIGRANT DANDELION

Deep within the mud-brown ground
of muscle and bone,
pith of water and cell,
a tap root and a million fibrous hairs
run deep
into the belly of the earth,
find room to grow
anywhere,
between cracks in pavements,
sidewalks, walls,
among blades of pristine grass
in purest lawns.
With sunflower yellow blooms
and feathery seeds,
it dares to live and succeed
undaunted by perennial labels,
damned nuisance,
common weed.

If you’d like a signed copy addressed to you, please go to “Books” on this website and click on Mustard Seed. Amazon also sells it but I won’t be able to sign and write in it for you.

Why was I born

A year and a half ago, I fell seriously ill. After a 6 day stay in the ICU, I came home unable to unscramble a simple five alphabet word like “poems.” It took me 4 days to go through the final proof of my own book “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems ─ and sad beyond words. Much, much better now, I have learned to accept a new “normal” with humility and patience without yearning for the woman I was.

Some 25 years ago, I attended a conference in Rome and returned with a statue of the Pieta which has been on my mantelpiece above the fireplace ever since then.
The poem below (included in Mustard Seed) comes from gazing at that statue endlessly.

THE PIETA
After Michelangelo Buonarroti, Vatican City, Rome

O lady, you part your legs,
not to birth the one you grew within your womb,
but to cradle a man—
his buttocks in the hammock of your gown
your elbow an arc for his shoulders,
stilled temples on your breast.

You gaze at purpled gashes, blood reds, pinks
his body still warm,
your boy crowned king.

For this alone were you born,
For this alone he born.
O Mary,
Look up from his face.
Tell me,
For what was I born?

(for a signed copy of Mustard Seed, click on books)

Why was I born

A year and a half ago, I fell seriously ill. After a 6 day stay in the ICU, I came home unable to unscramble a simple five alphabet word like “poems.” It took me 4 days to go through the final proof of my own book “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems ─ and sad beyond words. Much, much better now, I have learned to accept a new “normal” with humility and patience without yearning for the woman I was.

Some 25 years ago, I attended a conference in Rome and returned with a statue of the Pieta which has been on my mantelpiece above the fireplace ever since then. The poem below (included in Mustard Seed) comes from gazing at that statue endlessly.

THE PIETA
(After Michelangelo Buonarroti, Vatican City, Rome)

O lady, you part your legs,
not to birth the one you grew within your womb,
but to cradle a man–
his buttocks in the hammock of your gown,
your elbow an arc for his shoulders,
stilled temples on your breast.

You gaze at purpled gashes, blood reds, pinks
his body still warm,
your boy crowned king.

For this alone were you born,
For this alone was he born.
O Mary,
Look up from his face.
Tell me,
For what was I born?

Very happy to tell you that I won my second Maryland Individual Artist Award, this time in poetry (the last one was fiction some years ago.) I submitted fifteen poems (the max allowed) that ended up in “Mustard Seed: A Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems.” Also, Beltway Poetry Journal named it one of ten best poetry book in 2016.

In honor of Mother’s Day, here is a poem from my book that I wrote for my grand daughter when my daughter-in-law was in labor.

UNWRITTEN POEM (for Emerson)

That day I wanted to write you a poem,
a villanelle, ghazal, pantoum,
even just a haiku.

I wanted rippled syllables,
rhyming words to squeeze into lines
and spill over when they ought to.

But that day—
there was no language, not even alphabets
for the journey you were taking.

So, I offered you my memory
of your father’s birth,
his twenty-hour journey into a world

soon to be yours.
I offered you what I couldn’t
offer him that day—

my quiet aching heart yearning to take
all the sorrow you would ever face
now –now while you were still safe

before you turned the first page.

And here she is now: