Tulsi

Healing plant

in cages,

venerated once

by the king’s caged women,

in a high, desolate palace,

abandoned for ages,

home to the vulture ‘kites’

wheeling with freedom’s will,

I Am Beloved,

cure for every womban’s ill,

My shrine your body,

your true home.

When will

My daughters

slip

through bars of their own making,

stop faking being happy, being ‘wife’

and seize again, reclaim,

freedom, real life?

Sacred plants enshrined

on pedestals on village walls

remind you.

How can you forget?

I Am with you yet.

My name is Devi,

green and growing,

present among you,

Giver of All.

________________________________________

Delhi eyes are lifted high

by raptors swooping

through the muddied sky,

hunting eagle-eyed,

called 'kites' and we know why.

They soar and wheel.

They need a wilder name.

I feel, beyond despair,

fierce power,

impersonal and real.

This caustic, tortured

water, air!

Can they survive? Can we?

Our watershed is sacred,

every drop

recycling, our breath

one with the air we breathe.

They soar so high and free,

but drop like stones to earth

to eat, to drink, like us:

Life teetering on this liquid,

disrespected

brink.

© Tamara Rasmussen 2018