Fugue

 

I lived ambling through a dream

 

It was nice– the scenery was pleasant

And in my naïveté, I lay

Anesthetized

Sniffing poppies

As the clouds scrambled for the east

 

They warned me to follow them

 

I laughed; they were mad

 

Did they not know they were part

Of a story I composed

A poem that I had penned?

If when the storm approached

I’d easily rearrange my horizon for a summer day

With a balmy tale I had known so well

 

When the squall had finally passed over

It abandoned me forlorn

In a bed of splintered bones

And tormented limbs

Hemorrhaged in my own stupidity

 

The Augury

 

Sitting by the window sill
All was quiet, all was still
Watched a black widow kill
and ply her craft in the ceiling corner

Weave in, weave out, a bobbing shuttle
proof of death’s defamed rebuttal
administered a stitching subtle
A handkerchief without a mourner

The hand upon the spinning wheel
Feeds the thread a measured deal
No more, no less, no inch to steal
from that that knows no foreigner

Finished full of lace and frill
the handkerchief, an airborne will
moth of cloth, the spider’s fill
what Death had had for dinner

This poem was originally published in April 2013 in the Indian Review.

 

by Ansel Oommen

Ansel Oommen is a freelance science/garden writer, artist, and former student of the Institute of Children’s Literature. His work has appeared in Blueprint, Visual Verse, Intima, and Redivider, among others. Discover more at: https://www.behance.net/Ansel

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