Coming Home Years After By Gopikrishnan Kottoor

The grasshoppers look up from the low hedge

With their glass shield gladiator faces,

 Then return 
delicately treading the green stemmed stalks

As if to tell their 
great  grass king

 About strange new arrival.

 Light colored butterflies  with sliced bread wings

Emerge victorious over the touch-me-nots.

 Memories burst cashew nuts in childhood’s fire,

Cindered with father’s frozen  lips

And mother’s 
dripping blood.

 Over the  hollow
of  chimney-cold  darkness,

Smoke-clouds knit in fine  myrtle 
lace

 A red Shroud   of Turin.