Pelt, Fur and Chamois
I hear calfskin differently.
Sheepskin, lambskin, goatskin, kidskin
- the shaved pile surface of a life.
Somewhere at the back of my vision
an intolerable mangled mess of flesh and blood,
hatching a new palette, flinchingred.
When father was on the ventilator
I saw time expand to eternity
whenever he regained consciousness and sought my eyes.
Recognition is the best gift.
Inside the white shroud of the hospital, his consciousnesses was receding
quitting the warm walnut crevices out towards the faultless space of skies.
I cowered under the thin, blanched gauze of hope
seeking acknowledgement one more time. My face
as sallow as the desert he came from.
Our togetherness butchered by the sawbone of death
The cleaver of time exposing marrows of longing
The muteness of life-changing moments getting to me.
So too the soundless slickness of knives.
Flesh removed by hand. The soaking, liming,
machining. Unhairing, degreasing, desalting.
The wind burying scents of terror beneath finger nails
the way the image of the napalm girl running in naked agony
is buried in our collective conscience.
The breeze ruffles the pelt, fur and chamois wherever it’s worn
like a blind grandfather feeling his children with his hands.
Like it failed to save a precious thing.
The scent of roses baulks against the blood
oozing nick by nick
scar by scar.
Published in Poetry at Sangam Ed by Priya Sarukkai Chabria October 2019.