by Bakul Banerjee
India voted. Women in rainbow-coloured saris
queued up by polling places. Vermillion powder
on partings of hair was a memorable color-burst.
That was mirth.
For many summer weeks, politicians dragged out
citizens from their humble shelters, while in the US
robins pulled out worms from the moist earth.
That was mirth.
Swallows squawked, as the squirrel hung
upside down from their bird-feeder,
while India plunged into voting head first
That was mirth.
A Chai-wala became the Prime Minister
defying societal odds while thumbing
his nose to the idea of a privileged birth,
as the critters in Chicago frolicked with mirth.
Award winning author and poet Bakul Banerjee, Ph.D. published her first volume of poems, titled “Synchronicity: Poems” in 2010. For the past fifteen years, her poems and stories appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies throughout U.S. and India. She lives near Chicago and received her Ph.D. degree in computational geophysics from The Johns Hopkins University, Maryland.
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