Before Autumn Sets In | Ashok Niyogi

It is an overwhelmingly mischievous colour thing
Only Salmon bright foolish pink
Fail to catch the overall gaiety
And meaninglessly fight clear-ice water
Upstream  

Past geo-magnetic memory
Remembered souvenir smells
In exaggerated caribou coffee cup
Board walk above a Creek so alive
Trilling with the animated hunt for
Hand-held photographs waltzing on ether
Transient
Migrating in innocent herds of
Cow and bull and pasta nibbling young
Into and out of clouds and satellites
Whirring by earth and mercilessly recording
Your and my touristy grin

Ruffled yellow-blue dolls’ houses made of cake
I’ll have the blue icing on the turnstile
With red strawberries sticking out of lawn
Yellow grass flowers and magenta picket fence
Whiff of pale Elderberry in my unshackled elf garden

In the back
Mysterious Indian faces carved on stout Cedar
Streaked with robust grey irony green moss
Lining the brown bird-bath
That has signaled giving up

Naughty orange-yellow Poppies
Stuck helter-skelter into ample rose
White cleavage of sport
Mingle with frigid mauve Shooting Stars
Alaska Fuchsia weeps with purple pendants
All green leaves too midsummer big  
Have gone thickly berserk in this short month of heat
Pink Leprechauns feed on Firewood honey
Gargantuan dogs frolic
White and honey Bald eagle majestic
Sweeps its lone shadow on fat greedy vivid grass

I have migrated with my backyard Rufous
Glowing like a bed of coals bright orange
Singing iridescent red
About irresponsible afternoon fun in Alaskan sun
Looking up through tall dark handsome Spruce
Supine in Lupine amidst violet-blue Iris
Take me and ravish me now
In this rainbow rain
 
Such extravagant dances in the town woods
Blue pink yellow red white grey purple black all random  
Such musical steps in dappled rhythmic sunshine
Making liquid so that everything can flow
Into the light-hearted warm

Love making with Siberian Flox
And bugs in your locks
Looking up at white water falls
Cascading crashing silently relentlessly

In this moment
Grey clouds across your morning Bay
Are abandoned like summer skirt
And inside caverns of my breast
Many lay dolphins
Are at timorous play

Indian Review | Ashok has a book of poems – Tentatively (I-Universe) -2005. His poems have been published in print and electronic journals worldwide. Under his penname Bhagirathananda, he has written two books of spiritual essays – Hence An Enquiry Into Brahman (B B Graphic) – 2012 and My Yajna (Quills Ink) -2014.