The Ruffled Spring
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry by Shivangi Mishra: ‘The calm stillness of those frosty mornings of yesterdays / Still echo in my dreams, / Ruffled within a distant silhouette of past’
The calm stillness of those frosty mornings of yesterdays,
Still echo in my dreams,
Ruffled within a distant silhouette of past,
Akin to dry floating leaves heartily greeting,
Hustled shoulders, dismissive palms and polished shoes.
Why do I still remember those sprightly ravens?
That merely formed the favourable background,
Unrecalled for their plain warmth.
Possibly, the didactic ravens haunt my cherished memories,
Just like swaying chalk dust settles on vacant study desks,
How, how it pricks the delicate nostalgia,
Coming handy,
With culminating spring and wintry onset.
Routine communion,
With searching eyes and successors,
Tangible familiarity with familiar's predecessors, saw namesake strangers traversing beyond cosmetic senses, alone,
All of it taken as schedule that wouldn't be assailed,
Poor thy myopia, poorer the believed schedule,
Truly never fixed rather shelved,
How long, who and whose belief knew?
Belief(s), comparable to songs of a puritan chickadee,
Who decides to sing a new verse, every time we liked the older,
Only if we could contain tectonic cossetting which elevates and stomps and stomps and stomps but elevates,
A longing search in eyes, floating dust in grating chalk.
***
Shivangi Mishra is currently pursuing her masters in law at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and traces her ancestral roots to Varanasi. Her work has featured in The Hindu, Indus Women Writing, Journal of Intersectional Analysis, and over a dozen Indian law journals. She is on Instagram: @_shivangimishra__98.
