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

A Robin's Bath

Before the Queen's swans sail
under Billings Bridge,
amidst the white noise
of the traffic,
in the interval between yapping dogs,
a robin
takes her morning bath
in the brown water by the edge of the Rideau.

Under shaft of sunlight, she dips her beak and feathers
flight to nearby branch,
the bough spindly — as the alighting leg — concedes to the light tremor.
Bath over.
Now the robin frills her feathers,
while a quiet duck, brown as winter's fronds
paddles by under,
beaking her way through
making the river her home once more.