By Sekhar Banerjee
Watermelons have intense violence stored inside
them — the blood and serum of summer
and they are always calm. I appreciate the plant’s climbing habit
from the womb of the seed
to the intricate womb of heat — vertical and horizontal;
it has a miasma of secrecy to hide
what it is developing inside its
spherical mind
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And the rind of the fruit is striped,
dark green or blotched
to guard whatever finally transpires — red
or pink
with numerous sorrowful pips throughout
like a smile without a meaning
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and I think of the sandy soil of a roadside farm or a forlorn
river-bed somewhere which was harsh
on it — like a trigger
to finally teach us
how something develops — from seed to plant
to fruit and from fruit to seed to plant again
in reverse order — the order that we generally follow
in love
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Sekhar Banerjee is an author. He has four collections of poems and a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. He is a former Secretary of Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi and Member-Secretary of Paschimbanga Kabita Akademi under the Government of West Bengal. He lives in Kolkata, India.
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