My tail of colored feathers
hangs matted
closed behind me

It weighs me down

In this wet darkness
I can neither
dance nor fly

This darkness
weighs me down

No one here
to see my splendor

My only company
the relentless rain

Together
we fall from the sky
toward the darkening wood

The leafy trees below
reach out to catch me
but cannot

Between their outstretched
limbs I travel
like a stone

The swallows
sitting safely in their nests
sleep the sleep of the oblivious
innocent
of cellular divisions
silent metastasis

Their oblivion weighs me down

Only the insomniac owl
watches ever alert
for the kill

My famous feathery tail-eyes
are folded inward
blind to possibility

I am falling falling away-
escaping at last
this monsoon sickness

sing me a raga spin
me a garland
oh earth
but do not yet welcome me

Show me the sun.


About this poem
"This poem is the first in a sequence of curing ragas, written during a period when my husband of 40 years was very ill. The images are taken from 16th century Mughal Ragamala paintings that happened to be on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, where we were living at the time."
-Peg Boyers

About Peg Boyers
Peg Boyers is executive editor of Salmagundi magazine and the author of "To Forget Venice" (University of Chicago Press, 2014). She teaches poetry workshops at Skidmore College and the New York State Summer Writers Institute.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2016 Peg Boyers. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate