After spending moments...looking to and through the greens...lines I would share:
She was transplanting saplings
Leading a host of agri-workers
Singing, crooning or humming
I could not decipher from my place;
Place! Yes a mound of my own lethargy
From which I watched mankind at work
In the generative earth.
I saw her bent back, golden legs
Half sunk in the fertile slush
Her hands moved like lightning
From side to side, up and down
Promising food for mankind.
Her sweat-soaked saree tied
Securely to her waist
Pressed to her knees, forearms
Tattooed by mud and blades of grass.
I moved out, - it was so easy!
I ran; Yes I ran neither chased nor chasing
I ran in that mud and slush
Avoiding the planted seedlings
Ignoring the hey! Hey! Of the planters.
I stood panting before her
Equidistant from life and death
I said...
“I know who you are now!”
She looked up: Her face spattered
And splashed with patterns of slush!
On her forehead the Great Bear
Her hair winnowed by the sunlit air
Was a waving canopy of a benign sky;
Her cheeks bore the kisses of the earth,
Her nose balancing the twinkling eyes
Was the fulcrum of the dance of life.
She pursed her scarlet lips perhaps to speak
Then closed it with the words, “you know me how?”
Her eyes looked at me questioning -
“After uncountable centuries! After
Million births and billion deaths?”
I looked around to listen
No, not body or eyes or lips spoke
But I heard what I thought she spoke.
“Who am I then? She finally asked.
You are SHE, you are SHE
SHE?
“Source of Human Energy”
She stood up laughing breathlessly.
Copyright © 2017 by Oliva Rath. All rights
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