Geralyn Pinto, Mangalore, India
September returns cleanly;
a laundered month,
a truce of blue and white.
But I think of the rains—
their now and then songs
slipping through slate and rafter.
Monsoons inside the house;
beads of diamantine
on gable, sill and tile.
Overnight mushrooms
are bridal bouquets
for wee nocturnal folk.
Outdoors in August,
green pares the gloom,
strikes secret paths to the woods
where gulmohar blooms
clasp tightly
the twig and sap of trees,
flame petals
show wet birds
the way to summer mangoes.
My best work was
to resist the rain,
its wild preponderance.
Next time it will stay
streaming through the house,
randomly stirring roots to life.
Geralyn Pinto serves as Associate Professor in the Post-Graduate Department of English at St Agnes College, Mangalore. She is a creative writer who has been published and won prizes, nationally and internationally. Among her more significant achievements were the Desi Writers Lounge short story prize (2013 & 2014), the First Prize in the Save as Writers Contest, Canterbury (2016) and the publication of her story “Seven Steps from Irula Country” in the Fall/Winter issue of the Tahoma Literary Review (2019). She is a member of Alibi, an online British writers group and participates in their monthly writing workshops.