A new, yet unpublished poem by Prartho Sereno
We’d sung it, merrily, as we row-row-rowed
across childhood, but today my brother looks at me
askance. I’m fresh from India—in kurta and dupatta
the colors of marigold, a rosewood mala, redolent
of the faraway. Feathers and crows’ caws
in my hair. So, you think this is all a dream?
I haven’t said such a thing and wouldn’t, especially
now that any aptitude for parsing this dream from
that one has run hopelessly amok. And what he doesn’t
realize is that in India the thief is considered
an emissary—a sacred runner, sent to keep us real
by stealing off with our dreams.
If we come home empty we consider ourselves
blessed—which is how I sit now, at the picnic table
with its checkered cloth, spills of popcorn and summer
beer, here in the card game where it’s my good fortune,
once again, to lose.
Okay, he says, fist-bumping the tabletop as he
presents his closing argument, If this is a dream,
then who’s dreaming it?
He looks out at the blackening yard, alive
and blinking with fireflies, but almost as quickly
turns back—eyes under water—to say,
Somehow, I suddenly think I know who.
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