Girl's story Sonnet

In dark of morning, quiet' pause within

Time ‘tween days gone and day to be

When I allow the whims that prick my skin

To freely billow breaths of poetry

And etch my words upon a wastrel wind.

The arrogance of a learned path, submits

To a greater wisdom, a worldly dividend

Suspends belief, and justice has no fit.

When we consume the days of youngest ones

An innocence, a time when life's so fertile

For wealth's unholy need a sorrowed harvest done

Little boys into things, and things of little girls.

We harm the yield when we rob the seed

Of time in golden sun, unshadowed by greed


Girl's story is a short story of mine- recent thing- to mark the international Day of Children, November 20, 2013. The theme I have chosen is Child labor.  I set my story in 1916 but as I wrote it, it is still a fact of life today in Asia, and tomorrow in the US because the Right Wing will destroy the middle class ( repeal the minimum wage, right to work laws) and reduce it to the point of putting our children into hard labor ---if we let them. SO DON'T LET THEM.  They do it wherever they can, make $200 sneakers and pay workers $2 a day.

Amanat

when air holds dear treasure

smoke climbs into ancient's heavens

where today we see
much deeper into miracles of existence,
we of our small round world

When air is the last place we see

precious life, in residues of hopes,

in dreams of luxuries, in unspent love;

through heavy hearts and watered eyes

lifted to memory, and rich skies, so poor

are we, to stand and see – a brutal  taking of beauty.

Amanat they now say, only a few days

from a time when the treasure smiled

felt the touch of heavy air, busy air

street airs, breath of those come near with love

breath of those come near…without welcome

When love was easy and violence crept

while a nation so oddly slept, mindless

accepting; the unlucky caste(--) now

revealed in the way we see a worthless thing(--)

a treasure- Amanat of clouds, Amanat

of grieving, Amanat of the hopeful

and fear has a brief holiday, a harder day
soon to come, in last blessing from…Amanat



Amanat  an Urdu word meaning treasure.  The name given to a young woman
whose brutal rape and murder had caused a world wide  focus  on the condition of
women in India, the lack of safety and due process of law.