Bon Bibi
Loving Mother, Devi, Madonna,
I Am sweet as dark jungle honey.
I ride the back of My fierce tiger:
swimming, man-eating, terrible.
I protect My people from harm.
Gray mud of the Sunderbans
ebbs and flows,
(punctuated
by red claws of tiny crabs reaching,
gray monkeys deftly plucking them)
beaching the boats that carry rice,
coating the tangled mangroves,
lair of huge grey river crocodiles
and small gray spotted deer.
Moonlight sparkles
on My muddied little effigies,
dressed lovingly in once-spangled saris,
perching in branches along paths,
glittering like tiger’s eyes.
I Am loved because,
against all odds,
I give, sustain, and value
the bright sparks
of fragile human life
that balance precariously
on constantly reclaimed
gray
earth.
© Tamara Rasmussen 2018