Tuesday 20 July 2021

Blood Moon

 Swiftly,  swiftly

The tide travels

Licking and rising 

Here, there


At Cuban beaches

At Iraqi deserts

At Vietnamese jungles

At Afghanistan's hills 


At Gaza's crowded alleys

At Yemeni mountains

At Donbass villages

At Baghdad's slums.


Looking for a breach

Looking for a fissure

And where it is turned back

It moves elsewhere 

To try again. 


Overhead the blood moon

Immune

Draws the tide, commands it, 



But the blood moon's orbit 

Shrinks 

Decays

The hungry ocean awaits it

The vengeful desert

The patient hills.


Copyright B Purkayastha 2021


(I dreamt the first lines of this poem, woke at 4 am, and wrote the rest before I forgot. Good job,  too, because I  didn't remember a word of it later.)