Description

Hidden Bird Singing, a collection of fifty-two short poems, offers fifty-two ways of looking at life, each opening a new vista. It could be a butterfly-pea vine twinning around a mildewed clothesline, tendrils holding fast, like a "young child, eager but scared/clutching a grandparent's hand." It could be the "sacred ash of burnt desires," "drizzling on the quivering earth," as Shiva dances in ecstasy.The predominant theme, running through most of the poems, is the beauty and vibrancy of a living nature, be it an okra blossom queening in a kitchen garden or a star-studded night sky over an island beach where "the Stellar and the Stygian" enhance each other. A second thread is that of human life, domestic as well as universal, ranging from a delightful lesson in geography about "pushing South America/under the elbow of Africa," to the terrible dance of death in Gaza as an un-squirming world watches children die. The poems speak of love and loss. An uneventful afternoon tea may see a moment, taking off and flying into the heart, like a "rare little bird, rainbow hued, cooing nectar." But at twilight, as "dusk burns to cinders," a memory may cast "a long dark shadow/slithering out/of a half-closed door." They also speak of redemption. Death may be a castle where "no colours can live." But we have the option to reach there, hitchhiking on dreams, which fly like "humming beetles (not black but colourful)," "hovering over every bloom."