Mitigated Response
Not one or two but five of them,
Caught in a limbo, it was a knock,
Sudden, as the preparations were on –
Of the long awaited marriage of their aging daughter.
She too was among those
Who boarded the ambulance,
Quarantine zone was awaiting them
Away from home.
People seem to have been nudged
Into a slow motion jamboree,
The protestations, quirky medication bills,
Have failed their nerves.
They all huddled gradually in the omnibus,
Sauntered into the waiting hulk
As the driver kept reminding
It was not solely at their command.
My afterthoughts were the wedding
Is still twelve days apart,
Mitigating, unsuspecting snatches.
How slow life has become
And death seems to be in a snatching hurry!
Dr Archana Bahadur Zutshi has two volumes of poetry, Poetic Candour and The Speaking Muse, available on Amazon. She is a bilingual poet – translator, author of chapters in literary texts and co-author of twelve international anthologies. An accomplished poet who has been a judge for online contests and a winner several times, the ‘Culturium’ (March 18, 2019) features her and her poems. Her works have appeared in All Poetry, United by Ink, Spillwords, Confluence, Setu, The Bilingual Journal, The Madras Courier, MirrorSpeak and the Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies.