Summer Sky
By Gopal Lahiri
There is peace somewhere, at some corner.
but I have never really gone there.
Up there in the summer sky, the black birds glide in the air
they want to fly home in the river
and then they begin to descend and they are gone near
the bank of eroded amphibolite- so glossy they
look wet, transformed with green moss and scurvy grass,
Ducks and cormorant look for the shallow water,
or like mistletoe climbing up in the trees of heaven.
they open their faces like small dark lanterns,
the water remains water,
while they look deeper into the yellow reeds.
The sky above is a clutter of high clouds and they
know where the water patch slowly dries up.
Gopal Lahiri is a Kolkata, India, based bilingual poet and critic and published in English and Bengali language. He has published 30 books to his credit and his works are translated in 18 languages. poems are published across more than one hundred journals and anthologies globally Recent credits: The Wise Owl, Catjun Mutt Press, Dissident Voice, Piker Press, Indian Literature, Kitaab, Setu, Undiscovered Journal, Poetry Breakfast, Shot Glass Journal, One Art Journal, The Best Asian Poetry, Converse, Cold Moon, Welsh Haiku Journal, Verse-Virtual journal, International Times and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021. He has been awarded the Jayant Mahapatra award.