Deep in my garden
I berry some nightshades,  
before the mischief scampers 
to mouse those ripe secrets it 
rats on them to the colonies around

The startled cat's paws, 
on the rain puddles 
hint at more things 
beyond a bat's eye: 
The blinks' watch that tick 
with the movements – 
the doze of exits and 
the wake of binding entrances, 
into the stretches of the yawning silence. 

The last train rattles 
like a forgotten alarm 
set as a reminder of 
a masked nightmare of 
the impending third wave, 
a handful of surviving fishermen 
watch out, eyes fixed as usual 
on those life-rafts 
loyal in their fortitude 
unlike the wooden faced idol of Mary, 
they key faith to fish every night.

Sreekanth Kopuri Ph.D. is an Indian poet from Machilipatnam. He is the current Poetry Editor for The AutoEthnographer Journal Florida, Writer in Residence and Professor of English. A Pushcart nominee for 2023, he has performed his poetry at Oxford, John Hopkins, Heinrich Heine, Caen, Banja Luka, and many other venues. His poems have appeared in Two Thirds North, Arkansan Review, A Honest Ulsterman, San Antonio Review, Tulsa Review, Expanded Field, South Broadway Journal, Vayavya, American Plants & Poetry, Nebraska Writers Guild, Poetry San Jose, Oddball Magazine, to name a few. His forthcoming book From an Indian Diary is a finalist for the 2022 Eyelands Book Award, Athens. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of the Golden Book of the Year 2022.