STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
APARNA MITRA
At this hour, the house sleeps still. Locked in your
separate dream, you turn, then smile.
We are all just walking each other home,
said Ram Dass. Thin first light like watered milk
greys the windows, fingers the broody crouch
of sofas, the huddle of bookshelves and tables.
The night was cold. Frost has crisped
the long winter grass in the yard
where the sharp-beaked currawong hunts.
Winding sheets of mist tangled in the pear,
bits of blue snagged in the mouths of branches,
the morning stout as a horse, chilled flint shine
on its steaming flank. What’s gone stays gone
and nothing is like anything else. Our metaphors
are a child’s stick figures, thin and neckless.
The world makes and then it unmakes,
over and over, again and again.
How fleeting it is – the shuffle of this world.
And still the slow joy. Remember how we stood
on a long-ago hill under the thoughtless stars?
I want to touch you.
I am done with words.
Aparna is a Melbourne based poet. Her poetry has twice won the My Brother Jack Awards, was a finalist in the Fish Poetry Prize 2021 and longlisted for Palette Emerging Poets 2022. Aparna grew up in Calcutta, has a masters in business management and has worked in banking and microfinanace. Her most recent publication was in The Empty House Press and in Psaltery and Lyre. Poems forthcoming in The Amethyst Review and Psaltery and Lyre. When not writing, you can find her trying to coax temperamental tropical plants to bloom in her suburban Melbourne garden and tweeting @aparnamitra0.
