Three Poems by Saheli Mitra

Saheli Mitra is a journalist, author and poet, who owns her own content and creative company Tales Talks & Walks (TTW). With an experience of 25 years as a journalist with a leading English daily of India, she has more than 200 published articles on critical law, consumer and environmental issues. Her company today handles well-known clients across India and abroad, editing and writing books and web page content for many entrepreneurs.

Being a passionate nature lover and a traveller mom, she also runs her nature group ‘To Trees with Love’ and at leisure weaves words into poetry and short stories. Author of internationally launched romantic thriller Lost Words (July 2014), that topped the Amazon USA and UK lists and found place in many well-known state libraries of USA, she is also co-author of short story collections like Half Baked Love, Knitted Narratives, Meri Kahani, People Called Kolkata and Dynamos Zios. She is a regular contributor to the poetic revolution across the globe, writing for international magazines like Du-kool (USA), iamnotasilentpoet (Spain), Duanes poem tree (USA), Yellow Chair Review (USA), Piker Press (USA), Taj Mahal Review, Asian Signature, Random Poem Tree and has featured in print anthologies including ShetheShakti, Minds@work, Love and War anthology, Women Poets of the World and Cloudburst (USA).

Unmask

My masks were never an illusion, the ones

I wore while talking to the moon.

You once said you love my eyes, those that I left twinkling beyond my masks.

My masks never lied, the ones I wore

to take my lips away from your kisses

And let the moon surprise

Silently, shiningly, glaring bare on my mask.

My masks were never diseased, no germs ever clung, but the love lost tales

on the day you left

Scripted moments and sunsets, colouring my dark masks in hues of rainclouds.

You loved the broken me, I came thus

in fragments, in parts.

Just the eyes as you said, never the heart.

Never wished to know what lay beyond

the tears that often the masks wiped dry.

For your unseen veil was more invincible than my mask.

Its dirt lay invisible behind your smile.

You had no mask,

yet you were masked forever.

2

Droplets of Love 

Seduced? Sensuous droplets sitting for a prey on kissing lips, bees on their wings.

The queen that orders her mates to march on the line of duty.

I raise a revolution instead, leafing through

A wet path, that never ends.

My moans drowned in the thunder claps

Playing music with my urges, my cries,

Lost on the sail of dark clouds.

Drowned in the pouring rain.

Seduced? Boom! And they burst,

make love with their raindrops.

Memories, pangs, pain, carried away

To a faraway land, that no human maps ever held.

Love came silently this dawn,

And I marched ahead

In the darkness, beyond life and death.

Even the valley of corpses

Blurred before my eyes.

Bowed before the shattering gongs

Deafening my senses.

I was seduced at last!

3 

Locked

Locked within the atoms of their fragrance

I soared up the universe

That too had molecules of pain

Of destruction, of agony, of birth pangs

Nova and supernova, rising above ashes

Of comets strewn, my atoms put to test

Put to rest, as peace reigned

In the core of that hanging melody.

Dissected them, my scalpel proved blunt.

Today all my attempt to learn,

Got unlearned. For those tiny flowers

Swaying in the hypnotic aroma

Of a new life born,

Had turned the key of my lock

Set me free, from universe to atoms

My journey turned endless.

My freedom pushed the bars

Of confinement inwards,

Mirroring a soul that I never searched.

Now I fly from atom to atom,

From universe to universe

I roam the garden of Eden,

I know the secrets of a tiny moment

And that too of an endless space!

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