Poems by Snehal Vadher 

Pink Trumpets 
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Going down in the elevator,
a teenage girl checks her watch
prudently. Time has begun to mean
a lot since she was given this gift
on her birthday, maybe, like the sky
begins to grow against a silk cotton tree,
rough-barked, with bulbous, flesh-red
flowers which, once you learn the name,
never again appear the same. Like the knowledge
of spring with which the pink trumpet cuts
the skin of my eyes, keener each year,
asking how could ambition blind me so much
to their white hot beauty when at home
Father sits filing insurance papers
as I go out cycling on empty streets,
when these glimpses are all I have
and on most days not even them?
 
 
Some suburban streets 

where the brief preface to winter begins
and continues in a self-effacing endnote
 
where around the corner a vine descends
in arithmetic progression to the accompaniment
of crickets
 
where at any hour of the day a middle-aged
balding man may bring his broken
daughter for a walk
 
where the octogenarian couple walks hand
in hand, both plain looking, like you
and I will become, both beautiful once and now
the streets have grown so wide
and the trees no longer hold
the sky in their leafy canopies
our days and years forgotten
like the faces of passers-by
yet clean and dressed and determined
I walk into the sunburst stage, grab your arm
and peer ahead through the haze of traffic.
 

Snehal Vadher was born and raised in Bombay. He has taught English and creative writing for over a decade. He now guides bicycle tours and treks in Dharamshala. His first collection of poems is forthcoming in early 2024.
 
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