After the birds have winged away, their smudges remain on swaying branches
forming green droplets
as sprouting leaves from claw-marks
and mellowing fruits get impregnated with sweetness, with the scratch of chirping.
The woman too sits, likewise, on the crest of the house
and disappears all of a sudden as if reminded of something

Holding a broom or clothes to be squeezed
Or sporting on her fingertips the flavor of asafetida
or the wetness of a baby's napkin-diaper changed a while ago .
Her eyes keep favouring you for the lifetime.
And her feet?- the earth, that is, the sky.

As she enters the home, she is a bird
but the moment her scrawny legs touch the earth,
they behave in a way so weird,
astonishing the whole neighborhood of trees and birds :
she stands at the threshold like a freshly planted sapling in a flower-bed,
halfway thru' unfamiliarity and intimacy.

Her legs start taking roots in the corridor, in the sadness of the backyard
in the age-old account-book, in your glad thighs and gloomy heart.
Now onwards neither can birds fly nor can the trees stand still, never ever.
Both, the birdbath and the flower-bed would be brimming now onwards, with aridity.

Even while serving lunar porridge in your bronze-bowl
she keeps retreating, step by step, towards crematorium:
she, - the ashen wrinkly great grandma, grandma, or mom,
- yours or your kids'.

The bird becomes
cousin of the Arundhati star1 deep rooted in the sky.
Even after that, pervade the entire household
the aroma of sweet dishes, play-full cries of kids and homely incantations of
constellations
on the day of shraddh.
In the waddle of expecting women-folk
one finds lightness of birds and heaviness of laden trees
and thus the home follows in the footsteps of life.

Although its prints can't be traced on the floor of the house.

Translation: Dr. Piyush Joshi and Dr. Rajendrasinh Jadeja