Each raindrop in Leesh River tea estate
is anonymous
like pollens in April. They propose
to be named less logically
like a provincial relative

Rain massages memories,
and scalp , forest floors consume the sky,
the dead leaves
and sigh belladonna and zinc
you don’t know why

you stayed all night
between yesterday and no valid place
on a forest-bottom
like a festival always postponed

Lichens and mosses,
at least five different types sprang up
on the walls of your sleep
like a beautifully freckled skin
of an old lizard in rain

That was as deep
and as far as we could go

Now you feel there was a lost raindrop
in your eyes
The rain solidified around it to overlook
you and took a
different road to sleep

…

Sekhar Banerjee is an author. ‘The Fern-gatherers’ Association’ (Red River) is his latest collection of poems. His works have been published in Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, Muse India, Bengaluru Review, Kitaab, Verse-Virtual, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Tiger Moth Review, Mad in Asia Pacific, RIC Journal and elsewhere. He has a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. He is a former Secretary of Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi and Member-Secretary of Paschimbanga Kabita Akademi under the Government of West Bengal. He lives in Kolkata, India.