triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh guest editor: Geethanjali Rajan
theme: listening
just as
the sutra chant begins . . .
a cuckoo’s call
Kanchan Chatterjee, India
(Cattails, October 2019)
Note by the editor: The theme for June 2022 is ‘listening’. I hope you enjoy the music, sounds, and silences of nature in these showcased poems of close observation.
Congratulations Kanchan. A fine poem!
Thanks to all my new and old friends here on THI Spotlight. Your encouragement is very much appreciated. I hope that the length and, at times, overly-wrought language in my little reviews are not too much an imposition. I know I get gushy at times.
As you may have gathered, I am using this forum to whet my critical skills. Having such a fine batch of poems to work with has made this pastime a real pleasure. Geethanjali, your haiku selection habeen consistently thoughtful and inspiring. Many deep bows from this old word drunk.
---Billie, Kiku Makura
Thank you so much Geetanjali for sharing this beautiful poem with us. For me here in Trivandrum, we have the cocks in the backyard neighborhood whose sound is just high pitch to perfection. Somehow i like their dialogues!
In simplicity lies the beauty of a haiku. Thanks so much Geethanjali for your lovely selections this month. Billie Dee's commentaries have been a bonus!
Cuckoo has been my favourite birdsong.
Just a two-note song and non-stop repetition - day after day, month after month. It merges my school days with the days when I used to practice my music for hours, then in Hyderabad, and Mumbai and then in Pune - where I would hear it from every side into one beautiful experience. I love the way Kanchan brings two sounds coming in simultaneously and our remarkable ears - being able to discern them as separate sounds! Isn't that marvellous? I've always noticed - when I want to hear one voice - I can distance the other voices and zoom in on the single voice I want to hear. How sadly our hearing aid fails…