Do I ever remember a winter
without these fine tuned feathers,
the fluttering white cloud that pillared the fishermen’s hope
the Wind’s un-transgressing decree?
If I could also be one!
but wonder why I must set an alarm in my mobile
for petty things when those delicate ones do not,
for even the bigger.
Lost in the boat, emptied of hope, an old fisherman,
who never killed a bird
waits on these seamless robes of light
to hint where to fish.
Are these the smaller words of that bigger One
within their tuned logistics, flying along
the set secret rhythms, only these breakers know?
To bird, now I know, is to soar off the prosaic drafts,
for the verse that migrates the meanings, off the known.
In our fields down the Way, stalks of life rise
from the guano that shines like white gold. It’s time, I knew the Word, migration.
by Sreekanth Kopuri
Sreekanth Kopuri Ph.D. is an Indian poet from Machilipatnam. He is the Current poetry editor for The AutoEthnographer Journal Florida, Writer in Residence, Athens and a Professor of English. Field Guide Poetry Magazine of Hawaii, USA has nominated his poem “Coffeeying the Day into the Song of Solomon” for 2023. He recited his poetry in Oxford, John Hopkins, Heinrich Heine, Caen, Banja Luka, Gdanski and many universities. His poems appeared in Two Thirds North, Arkansan Review, A Honest Ulsterman, San Antonio Review, Chicago Memory House, Tulsa Review, Digging Through the Fat, Expanded Field, South Broadway Journal, Contrapuntos Untethered Review, A New Ulster, Vayavya, American Diversity Report, Plants & Poetry, Burrow, Rational Creature, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry San Jose, Oddball Magazine, to mention a few. His forthcoming book From an Indian Diary is the finalist for the Eyelands Book Award 2022, Athens. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of Golden Book of the year 2022. His research paper “After the Words” won JK Foundation Award. Kopuri was deeply influenced by Jayanta Mahapatra’s poetry. Kopuri lives with his mother in Machilipatnam