BRAIDS by Krisha Wignarajah

CONTENTS

It is raining...

Braids

Birds have wings...

Flies buzz...

It is evening...

Grade Two

I go home...

Wellawatta Outdoor Bazaar

Curfew

Amappa's Eyes

Islands

I reached out...

Evening Walk

Awakening shadow...

The Flight

A Robin's Bath

The Heron and the Swan

War on a Mango

Tea with Dadda

Granite Stone

Sigh with the wind...

Today, I have gone back...

About the Poet

Acknowledgements

Chapbook Home

Friday Circle Home

Braids

by Krisha Wignarajah

The Heron and the Swan

The lesser blue, that is
the greater being too good for the
marshy lands of Billings Bridge.

Water from some leaf
trickled down my forehead and tangled with my curl.
Passing the stone where swans are fed,
I walked down the earthen trail.

The river returned the glassy white gaze
of the sky — too pregnant with contained light.
And then
between two craggy,
beige-brown trees
stood
the heron and the swan.

Tucking into each other's silence
musing at each other's glossed feathers and colour
under lulled day
amidst water in indolent twirls

flower in mid-nod
even leaf hesitated to spill more of yesterday's rain
and all was quiet on the earthen path
not a curl turned, not a fold flapped.

But dogs
have no reverence for silence.

The Queen's swan, gathered its clipped wings and sailed
the heron unfolded
streaked across the water like
a rebel gray cloud's
descent from heaven,
waking the river once more.