Rebecca Parker and
Uma Gowrishankar

“Buried Alive”
Rebecca Parker
Response

Inspiration pieces:

Prayer
By Uma Gowrishankar

Life is a large poem, I live out day by day,
words strung as prayer beads. The warm seeds
from the ancient tree in the Himalayas press
my nerves, blood vessels; take secrets to my heart
like the underground river that carries in its cells
knowledge of the valleys and hills it does not get to see.
I kneel on my grass mat, roll a word in my finger,
let it fall between silence to search for my voice.

Just beneath existence
By Uma Gowrishankar

When words vaporize, speech freezes
and muscles atrophy in the hollow chest,
prayer is hard to extract. Then I step
into the chamber of pain, kneel down,
surrender like heap of clothes a washer man
piles to wring. In that dark stillness
I stoke the coal, it glows like an amber bead.
Soon vapour-like dawn breathes out
from the neck of a heaving volcano.

 

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