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’.)
