My Part of the Earth is Coloured in Climate Change | Poetry of an Indian Summer

"Drongo basks in acrobatic flexibility in someone's borrowed melody"

With MAY being observed as "Mental Health Awareness Month", I decided to take a moment every day to shift FOCUS to NATURE and see if I can find POETRY in her being. And like always, I did.

I would write these Nature Poems solely for my discretion, with the singular purpose of how the "act of writing" it made me FEEL, and true to word:

it made me feel ALIVE, uplifting, a feeling of FLOW, that there is MORE my presence on Earth, being an earthling was about finding this moment of clarity - of having the opportunity to see, hear, listen, feel, smell a planet brimming with life.

But I also couldn't ignore the impact of Climate Change (yes, the big bad word, lately) in the fabric of my Indian Summer. How minutely it impacted life, at times subtle, mostly on the face - and found its way into my Poems....

"flash of white wings, an Egret circling skyward"

MAY BEGINS:

I.

The wild wind continues to lash at May's unprepared nights and days well aware of its dusty vengeance -

Awaiting rain, crucial for a late spring, crucial for balancing summer's tempo in transit, crucial for the greening growth years, crucial to water the songs of flowers;

Albeit in drying Earth, the Waterhen cries out in the dark, lamenting her absence:

When she arrives still post thunderous tantrums and lightening ablaze, stays for minutes on end, storming up hails in her iciness, destruction instead of nurturing, waterfalls cascading and leaves unexpectedly, a blank space for the wild winds to ravage:

The soul isn't thrilled, but sits with the wind still, better than foolish acts of foolish humans that fuel this changing climate. Till the soul is dancing with the wind, home in its gentleness, the trees aren't complaining but sway to the beat, the birds continue to sing, landing on balconies instead of branches;

It is better to sit with the wind, for there is poetry on the other side of resistance:

That nature which surrenders to flow knows.

"Oriole sings the loudest, in yellowed kinship, unaware yet of familiarity known to breed contempt"

II.

An effortless, day-long, lingering cacophony of abundance, cuts through perennial gray skies:

Ever since a calendar date change, a rainless farce, a pre-monsoonal guise, that strange white glow, a storm warning, but limping rain that couldn't hold;

Greening growth in a late late spring energetic high, albeit Summer at bay, and the dusty perils of the wild wind losing tempo:

Nature's pause, you can hear the breathing:

Echoed in the relaxed call of Orioles, colours of the sun in flight, settling sky-high, a hanging orange candy ball at sunset;

When the Waterhen sings loudest at dusk, the Asian Openbill Stork flies the lowest, and the Blue-Throated and Lineated Barbet cousins fight for custody;

Unlike the Koel, changing its mating call, passing the limelight to the Hawk-Cuckoos deeper in the woods;

But nobody can beat the Oriental Magpie Robin sweet talking to the soul, crowned songbird, ruler of the charts if at all the Sparrows in their day-long chorus can dare match up, and the pearl-necked Dove's lullaby gets a free pass, a new entry is the edm coded electric melody of red-bottomed Bulbuls:

While the Kite's warrior's cry is wiser like the night's curious Owl's curious sigh:

Amid all that, the Drongo basks in acrobatic flexibility in someone's borrowed melody:

It is the Mynah cousins, Pied Crested, Javan, and Brown that take the throat chakra flex trophy.

"the reigning monarch of throat chakra knows of its draining magnetic pull, Mynahs quietly open their beaks skyward"

IN A FORTNIGHT:

III.

In the lingering promise of rain, bread crumbing, thunderous roaring, empty vessels swearing the loudest, lightning bolts of insecurity, the sky never really opens up but stays clouded shut, not white but drab, making me dream of blue skies, till it rains a little, distracting,

Yet the songs of Spring are still playing, a green dream, in shades of fresh, nature's youth:

The wild wind tries, winds down to a breeze this time, robbed of its dusty gagging, and the trees whose hips they once swayed now shake their fingertips in bored lethargy:

And right then in the middle of chaotic, giving transition a complete miss, Summer lands in the heart of May, blindsiding, gaslighting, May could have been a late late spring BUT ISN'T -

May rises her temperatures to a sickening high, an elevator pitch hitting at the shins, a sun that I worshipped a mere 6 months ago, adored its warm embrace in wintered minutes, and wrote ballads in remembrance through a gray rainless clouded lull, the same sun turns treacherous, burning us down in its quest for strength, a heat that seeps through skin, send souls in comatose that don't know how to master a fire that rages and play:

So in May, Sparrows and Orioles pick on the heightened momentum and sing of energetic high to resign closer to sunset, but the reigning monarch of throat chakra knows of its draining magnetic pull, Mynahs quietly open their beaks skyward, as if comically recharging for later days:

May's hibiscuses bloom brightest in their deepest shade, reaching their zenith too quickly in youthful innocence, to fall to their demise the next:

As May in my part of the Earth continues to spiral and rise in opposing highs, Spring must have left sooner than expected, Summer may have arrived uninvited...

"I feel as helpless as an Oriental Magpie Robin abandoning her soul song to survive the heat"

LATE MAY:

IV.

A tropical green dream ravaged

by an untimely, unexpectedly, uninspiring premature heat;

Summer could've been poetic, if not for the tantrums of a changing climate at least in my part of the Earth -

I feel as helpless as an Oriental Magpie Robin abandoning her soul song to survive the heat, open-beaked:

Like the chatter of Mynahs dying down, and the sparrows have stopped trying too, trading their sweet day-long medley for the silence of survival:

If not for the flowering trees of May, the reds, pinks, yellows, and purple, bloom only to be burnt by a hard sun:

Who would tell the orchids it isn't the right time, or no longer the right place?

The Oriole is the only one who sings the loudest, yellowed kinship, unaware yet of familiarity known to breed contempt:

The Hawk Cuckoo knows and has receded to the densest parts:

The Koel doesn't even try if only the song of dusk couldn't be contained:

Till it rains, tough enough to humble down this heat and that's when all comes out to play:

Even a tiring wind is welcomed to blow away

Summer's egoistic flare, fanned by humans in their quest to refill their drying souls and failing: If only we looked for love in the right place -Right within tropical green dreams.

"Unlike the Koel, changing its mating call, passing the limelight to the Hawk-Cuckoos deeper in the woods"

V.

But the Ocean wouldn't have it, she was bothered by the unnerving heat, it was reflex -

A cyclone was brimming whilst this part of the Earth battled an intense Summer roughing up on what could have been Spring, but never mind;

An SOS was heard, and Nature reacted in fight or flight, we weren't prepared for repercussions this high, for when a human-tapered climate hits, it comes from all sides:

First, you piss off the Ocean, then you cut your forests, then you tamper the seasons, delay the rain, raise the heat, and what do you expect?

They react unanimously, arriving just an hour shy of midnight, with their roaring winds and piercing rain - the whole routine, storming in, thundering, lightning hurling, in rage like hell hath no fury but the scorned -

A wild sea, a land ravaged, rain-lashed, uprooted, flowering trees stripped of colour, hibiscus dead, jasmines drenched, Birds losing their unhatched nests.

As for the heat, a literal 15 degrees down, a temporal shift so deep even a gorge be shamed:

In this seasonal eye of the storm, no summer nor spring, not even an anticipated monsoon could fathom:

Now in a flip, May looks like the plot of a suspense thriller, gripping with its unexpected tilts in eventful extremes, magnetic match, unnatural, anticlimactic, double entendre.

"As cyclonic winds broke the Guava, a Blue-Throated Barbet lost its home"

Every Month I ask fellow poets from across the globe - "How your part of the Earth is Coloured?" and to express it via a Nature Poem. Because I have realized that "shifting focus to Nature and writing poetry" not only has its benefits, but also draws a map of events in real-time crafting a poetic landscape of the Earth, and this is "being an earthling" at its core.