The Thirtheenth Month
by Usha Akella
When you were not quite three months old,
Your hair straight as a drizzle,
With the deep knowing of a mother I said,
"She will have curly hair."
Twelve months streamed by. Then.
We awoke to step into a wood of riotous curls.
Our walk through you was a coming-to-know
the earth and light, a quickening of elements
in a wondrous quilt of brown tangled terrain
and quicksilver spirit.
You stepped out of babyhood as well
with a dark halo around your head,
a fiery, fierce spirit, solid, sure, happy
like a gypsy, strong willed, loving to dance,
loving music, you play us like tambourines,
we never knew so many wheels turned in our hearts
and could make music.
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Usha Akella, mother, poet, and founder of the Poetry Carvan, Westchester county, is a widely published, performing, and awarded poet both in the US and India. Her first book of poems “…Kali Dances. So Do I…” is reading material at Smith College. She is one of the rare poets writing Sufi poetry in English, and she is often accompanied by Steve Gorn, the internationally known flautist on the bansuri and clarinet. She has received the honor of being invited to participate in Struga Poetry evenings, the oldest world poetry festival held in the Republic of Macedonia, 2006. In 2005 March she released an anthology of the caravan poets with a foreword by Billy Collins.
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