Jesus Bug Meets its End

Row, row, row
Up and down and right and left
Row, row, row
On the water with my legs
Row, row, row
Back and forth, forth and back,
Row, row - oh! oh! oh!
Oh bother, bro!
Strike me dead, am stuck in mud,
Ow, Ow, Ow!!!

********

Jesus Bug aka Water Strider, Wherever there is water.

Balachandran V, Silent Valley, 28.04.2018.

Resident Fairies

My home, oasis in the middle of concrete desert.

'Still at the old house?', they ask me -
Little do they know I am so proud and smug
That I live in the hand- me-down decrepit
Where my grandmother and other ghosts linger.

I see them; there he is, my father, hopping down
From the coconut frond to nibble the leftover rice
There she is, my mother, the bossy Jungle Crow
Trying to edge out the squirrel.

Grandmother comes in the evening, hooting,
Espying from behind the tree leaves
Muttering to herself, uttering inaudible curses
At me, her grandson, that impractical dreamer.

They are all there, cousins and aunts
Maids and men, children and dogs.
They come as they wish,
 As fairies and birds and butterflies.

Later, when the sun goes down
I hear them, flitting in and out
Silently, like flickering memories
In and out, of my old mango tree.

Who you might be, pretty Jay,
Quietly sitting, looking at me?

********* . Balachandran V . Trivandrum. 01.05.2018

Common Jay ( Graphium doson), @ home, Trivandrum 01.05.2018

Lord Toad

Why do you, Toad, look at me

So impassive, so self-assured? 

You sit - no, squat on all your fours

your warty skin, wrinkled and ridged

Your glands swollen with poison -

Think I didn't know?

Go forth, be not afraid of me! 

Go forth and procreate!

For you and your kind, here - 

A blade of grass, a dried leaf

A twig to play with -

The shade of the great trees - 

And over there, Kunthi, for your children!

****** . Balachandran V. Trivandrum 01.05.2018