Pastoral Drawn on a Summer Bench

by Shinjini Bhattacharjee


​To remember the story
of a wood made plural
and it becomes a name
runny with black incisions
on the sidewalk promising reunion.
 
How it sees faces cradling
wrinkles of light on their edges
slit spined with anticipation
of being lived by the tug of the
salt in a baby’s mouth.
 
When the wall lies down
it lies down for the white twice removed
for the lack that makes its knitting
slanted so that it can’t prepare
the bones that split ribs into half fog, half ocean.
 
In the evenings, it lifts its head over
colors that forget each other, over  the mouth
that gives it her song, the dusk that swallows
a bird’s prayer, the background that holds too much
of loneliness before it dissolves in the frigid air.