Bon Bibi

Loving Mother, Devi, Madonna,

I Am sweet as dark jungle honey.

I ride the back of My fierce tiger:

swimming, man-eating, terrible.

I protect My people from harm.

Gray mud of the Sunderbans

ebbs and flows,

(punctuated

by red claws of tiny crabs reaching,

gray monkeys deftly plucking them)

beaching the boats that carry rice,

coating the tangled mangroves,

lair of huge grey river crocodiles

and small gray spotted deer.

Moonlight sparkles

on My muddied little effigies,

dressed lovingly in once-spangled saris,

perching in branches along paths,

glittering like tiger’s eyes.

I Am loved because,

against all odds,

I give, sustain, and value

the bright sparks

of fragile human life

that balance precariously

on constantly reclaimed

gray

earth.

© Tamara Rasmussen 2018