Intensive Care Unit – 2 ( White nights)

nurses123

Fragrant are the jasmine nights
With blood left over from twilight.
Here, fairies from dandelion fields
Flit their wings over a frothy sea of gauze.

Here, white are the nights
Where moonwalk the women in white.
I lie in the nude and close my eyes
And they roll a cool moon down my spine
And laugh like the patter of hailstones
That strum my sun bleached heartbeat strings.

A sweep of their swan wings fan
Sea waves to a tremulous white,
Soften rocks to candy floss clay,
Turn red bricks to white marble and
Blow the new moon to full.
They hover effortlessly over
The abodes of the yesterday saints
And pacify the dreams of the
Tortured subterranean minds.

They are the white messengers from space
The blossoms for the dying.
They save the wounded world with their iridescent smile
And wipe its baby bum of its adult ego shit.

Minmini switches on the twinkling stars.
Chandni wraps some moon-beads around my neck.
Roshni wheels me out through the light and shade

(Dedicated to the nursing attendants of the Mother Hospital, Thrissur, Kerala, in memory of a few days I spent there. Posted here in solidarity with their strike for better wages.)

Ra Sh is a poet. This poem was published as part of his collection `Architecture of Flesh.’

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