To reach my mother, it would be quicker to dig
a tunnel
through the earth’s belly. Half way around
the world
she lives alone,
where clouds hang low below lamp posts,
where monsoons cry in June.
Last night she left for home,
the one I left many moons ago.
I watched her recede,
enter the belly of a metallic whale,
like Jonah, it will spit her out on India’s
shores.
Refusing to commit to another visit,
she left plans vague,
afraid Orion may awake,
draw his sword,
rent open charcoal skies.
Born
in India, Lalita Noronha earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology,
and is research scientist, writer, poet and science
teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. Her literary
work has been widely published (Baltimore Sun, Crab
Orchard Review, Catholic Digest, The Christian Science
Monitor, “Get Well Wishes” (Harper Collins,)
“2001: A Science Poetry Anthology” (Anamnesis
Press,) among many others.) She has received the
Maryland Literary Arts Award for Short Story twice,
a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist
award in fiction, City Paper, and the National League
of American Pen Women. She is a fiction editor for
The Baltimore Review and the author of a short story
collection, “Where Monsoons Cry” (Black
Words Press,
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