Spiral in the backwoods | Kavya Ravi

a very short poem
lying on my table for long
is picked up one day
by my mother;
what does this mean?
she probes amusingly;
spiral in the backwoods
i had called it,
it’s nothing amma, I quip
read it for me, she says
it was a strange room
or familiar, i didn’t know,
there were noises and smiles
in crepuscular light,
i knew those faces and
their uncast shadows,
then came the neon lights,
the mundane music and
smoke that brought a haze
i see the hoops they formed
in the air around,
encircling and dissipating,
into unknown heights
i wished to go along,
to the backwoods.
i don’t understand it, she says
a faint smile later
she ruminates-
it feels grim,
write a happy one.
scribbles and cuts later,
there were no limericks
in my notebook,
i promise her a poem,
a happy one.