Poetry Collection: Metamorphosing Emotions

The Avocado

Revered among fruits

Emerald-like on the outside

Sea green on the inside

You evoke truth

You’re primeval goodness

An oval shaped delight

To eat you is to unravel 

Buried-in-the-earth stories of

Long ago people as

Indigenous as you are

I’m not a native like you

I’m a swallow come from afar

I breath in the travails of the land and spin stories; I belong

Fuchsias

We are fuchsias

Millions of years old 

And yet young

Once we bloomed in Circe’s magical garden 

Now we flutter open in love-crazed hearts

Claude Monet immortalized us on canvas 

A forlorn girl has us etched forever on her mind

We thrive on wind swept lands and in sun drenched fields

We are deep love, friendship and trust

We are privy to grief and loss, 

beaten down dreams and lost aspirations 

We ring in rainbows 

We heal and restore

Sew battered hopes anew

We are bold and delicate, 

dark and light

We are the cerebral slant where

Time kisses eternity

In the season of Pink

I bought a pink t-shirt 

Is it really such a happy color, you asked 

I arched my brows

Homer lauded the color in ‘Odyssey’

Called it the ‘rosy color of dawn’

Roman Goddess Venus was showered in pink flowers

Pink evokes good spirit and good health

It is love and romance

It is the blush on a tickled girl’s cheek

What’s more, science calls pink the oldest color

Yes, much before there was blue and green, there was pink

It doesn’t appear in the rainbow

But a pink night sky heralds a glorious day

Those are reasons enough to root for pink, I said

You winked, I winked back

On a sunkissed day we planted pink geraniums in the back yard

Together

(Simrita Dhir lectures at the University of California, San Diego, and is the author of acclaimed novels ‘The Rainbow Acres’ and ‘The Song of Distant Bulbuls’.)