Volume 5 | Issue 4 | Oct - November
2011 |
Half an Earth Away
Lalita Noronha
To reach my mother, it would be quicker to dig a tunnel
through the earth’s belly. Half way around the world
she lives alone,
where clouds hang low below lamp posts,
where monsoons cry in June.
Last night she left for home,
the one I left many moons ago.
I watched her recede,
enter the belly of a metallic whale,
like Jonah, it will spit her out on India’s shores.
Refusing to commit to another visit,
she left plans vague,
afraid Orion may awake,
draw his sword,
rent open charcoal skies.
Lalita Noronha - Born in India, Lalita Noronha has a Ph.D. in Microbiology and is a widely published scientist, poet, writer and teacher. Her literary work has appeared in over eighty journals, magazines and anthologies, including The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science Monitor, Catholic Digest, Gargoyle, and Get Well Wishes (Harper Collins.) She has twice won the Maryland Literary Short Story Award, a Maryland Individual Artist Award, and the National League of American Pen Women Award, among others. She is a fiction editor for the Baltimore Review and teaches both science and a humanities course (Glimpses of the Culture of India) based on her short story collection, Where Monsoons Cry. Her poem "Bar Talk" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011. Often featured on National Public Radio, “The Signal,” she is working on her first novel.
e-mail: drlnb@comcast.net
Web: http://www.lalitanoronha.com
