Bhuwan Thapaliya

She rose from her makeshift rustic bed

and strained her eyes in the morning sun

shining through termite-eaten windows.

Drank a glass of basil water and then made

her way up a trail on a tough terrain

 to the forest overlooking the Sunkoshi River

 to collect fodder for her cattle.

An old kerosene lamp hangs in the window

of an abandoned building and carved wooden deities

flank a rickety gate. Poor eyesight, back permanently bent

from the burden of heavy loads, feet deformed

and ravaged by walking barefoot on rough terrain,

she looked older than her ancestral deity on a hilltop nearby.

Dry corn leaves rustled underfoot. She picked one

and rubbed it in her palms, smiling at herself

and kneeled down to quench her thirst from a

little burbling creek neighboring her path.

Thereafter, she hastened her pace humming

her favorite song, sung by her mother

when she was young.

“Plant a tree, then another, then many more. 

Maybe we will be able to cleanse the world.”

Every time when she hums this song,

she feels her mother humming it with her too.  

Whistling, she walked deep inside the forest 

and soon her doko was fully fodder crammed.

She looked at the deep blue sky and grinned

as a little girl with rhododendron flowers

in her hands high up in the Himalayas

and then sauntered slowly down the hill,

carrying heavy doko on her back with the namlo straps

on her forehead smiling at her neighbors

showing her uneven teeth, as they prepare

to spread animal fertilizer on their fields.

On the back of her polka-dotted cow,

there was a little bird.

The cows mooed loudly after seeing her.

She fed the cattle and then went inside the kitchen

to cook dal, bhat and tarkari.

In the adjoining room, her hungry children were

already getting ready for their school. 

 

 

 
 
 
Bhuwan Thapaliya is a poet writing in English from Kathmandu, Nepal. He works as an economist and is the author of four poetry collections. His poems have been published in Wordcity Literary Journal, Pendemics Literary Journal, Poetry Life and Times, Trouvaille Review, Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic Initiative(Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University), International Human Rights Art Festival, Poetry and Covid: A Project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Plymouth, and Nottingham Trent University, Pandemic Magazine, The Poet, Valient Scribe, Strong Verse, Jerry Jazz Musician, VOICES ( Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Poets Against the War among many others

Every morning

dank scuffling begins

on the edge of our roof

as hungry pigeons

leave their nearby

shrinking shelters

and rush towards

our old Kathmandu house

when my mother calls

them as usual,

chirruping to them

in a high melodic note,

“Come, come, come pigeons.”

Then they lean over

the solar panel’s rusty edge

and look at us

with dark shiny eyes

and wait for the

sudden appearance

of the manna.

“Breakfast?” we ask.

They lower their head rapidly,

spring off to the floor

and start picking the grains.

Finished, they fly off.

It’s goodbye till we

wake up the next morning

to recreate the same scene

once again.

Leaning against the wall,

I take a sip

of lukewarm herbal water,

and exchange glances

with the colorful birds

flying low above me

in the gorgeous morning sky.

Their habitats are waning

in the face of global warming

but I can no longer pretend

that things won’t  be fine

 for them, for us. 

This generation

is growing up

with a lot more

reverence for nature

and I believe

in the extraordinary power

of human connections.

Suddenly,

the wind howls.

Fallen pigeon feathers

and chocolate wrappers

litter the terrace floor

and a squirrel swirls past my legs.

Kathmandu is still sleeping.

It’s not Saturday

but the city seems eerily silent.

Around me, the painted deities

sneer and snarl.

High above,

a flock of pigeons

coronet the sky. 

 
 
 

 
 
 
Bhuwan Thapaliya is a poet writing in English from Kathmandu, Nepal. He works as an economist and is the author of four poetry collections. His poems have been published in Wordcity Literary Journal, Pendemics Literary Journal, Poetry Life and Times, Trouvaille Review, Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic Initiative(Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University), International Human Rights Art Festival, Poetry and Covid: A Project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Plymouth, and Nottingham Trent University, Pandemic Magazine, The Poet, Valient Scribe, Strong Verse, Jerry Jazz Musician, VOICES ( Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Poets Against the War among many others.

Her late grandfather came with a hobbling gait

in her dream last night. They were in a tented camp 

on the river bank, nearby their abandoned farmhouse.

He poured a large peg of Khukri Rum, drank it

with a sly smile and sat down beside her

 on a wobbly camp cot, lit a  cigarette, 

nostalgic smoke curled into the night. 

He took a sip again and through a ragged crack

glimpsed outside and beamed at a  star worm crawling

among the fallen leaves, and thereafter listened for hours and hours,

the melody of those olden times. Its lyrics now hidden, buried,

awaiting discovery as a child with several siblings,

all forgotten, overlooked, lost.

The sky roared and the wind blew hard.

“I think I have to go now,” he whispered in her ear.

“So where do you go from here, grand pa,” she asked.

“I will continue to travel 

but now it is all about reverse travel.

I will move to a place where I’d been before

and stay maybe a week, a month , a year, 

and completely alter the way I see the future.

I see my father. I see my mother.

I see your grandmother.  I see you,”

he answered her with a somber smile

and requested her to stay connected with her past.

She nodded her head and said I will grandpa.

Next morning, she woke up late 

to a dead cell phone

beside her bed in a wooden rack.

No charger in sight.

Nepalese poet, Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections and currently he is working on his fresh poetry collection, The Marching Millions. Thapaliya’s books include, Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), Our Nepal, Our Pride , Verses from the Himalayas and Rhythm of the Heart. (Cyberwit.net)Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, The Strand Book of International Poets 2010, and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, VOICES (Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Countercurrents etc. Author: Safa Tempo: Poems New & Selected & Our Nepal, Our Pride
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)