A February Paean

Kausik Datta
2 min readFeb 7, 2022

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Emerald jubilee

Scene from a Bengali wedding with the bride’s palm, decorated in henna and bedecked in jewelry, is placed on the palm of the groom, and tied together by a floral string.
Photo by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier, dated January 16, 2011, via Flickr used under CC-BY-SA 2.0

Courtyard, dimly lit.
Spots seeking light outnumber
Exhausted streetlamps.

Delhi winter chill:
Miasma descends at dusk,
Himalayan winds.

Comfy in covers,
Hazy faces mill about
Minding own business.

Heedless of the crowd,
Arm in arm stand you and I
Wrapped in a bubble.

Straining eager ears,
Moon peeks from behind the clouds
Ever so nosy.

Gloomy-visaged
Anxious flowers lie awake —
Catastrophizing.

Hope’s flickering flame
Dreads extinguishment before
It illuminates.

As southerly gales
Bemoan shedding of dry leaves —
The tree left bereft.

Lovelorn songbird, hushed,
Awaits in her verdant nook —
Anticipation!

Your sudden embrace —
Sweet as an evening zephyr
On a sultry day —

And riding a sigh,
A few words escape your lips
And my world is made.

On this pale blue dot,
Circumsolar translation —
Now our odyssey.

Februaries bring
Reminiscence of one when
Our lives intertwined.

Two decades of bliss
Feeling, living the magic
In those precious words.

Happy Anniversary, Dear Heart! 🌹

Note 1: Imagery presented in paragraphs on anticipation was inspired by a song penned by one of the greatest poets of undivided Bengal, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), national poet of Bangladesh, and beloved of Bangla-speaking people everywhere.

Note 2: Each stanza is formatted in three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables in the style of Haiku, a non-rhyming poetic style that emerged in the 17ᵗʰ century in Japanese literature.

Note 3: Thanks, Mama Ki, for the prompt.

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Kausik Datta
Kausik Datta

Written by Kausik Datta

Wannabe storyteller in science. Graduate of John Hopkins Science Writing MA program.

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