Hidden Bird Singing

Hidden Bird Singing, a collection of fifty-two short poems, offers fifty-two ways of looking at life, each opening a new vista. It could be a butterfly-pea vine twinning around a mildewed clothesline, tendrils holding fast, like a "young child, eager but scared/clutching a grandparent's hand." It could be the "sacred ash of burnt desires, " "drizzling on the quivering earth, " as Shiva dances in ecstasy.
The predominant theme, running through most of the poems, is the beauty and vibrancy of a living nature, be it an okra blossom queening in a kitchen garden or a star-studded night sky over an island beach where "the Stellar and the Stygian" enhance each other. A second thread is that of human life, domestic as well as universal, ranging from a delightful lesson in geography about "pushing South America/under the elbow of Africa, " to the terrible dance of death in Gaza as an un-squirming world watches children die.
The poems speak of love and loss. An uneventful afternoon tea may see a moment, taking off and flying into the heart, like a "rare little bird, rainbow hued, cooing nectar." But at twilight, as "dusk burns to cinders, " a memory may cast "a long dark shadow/slithering out/of a half-closed door." They also speak of redemption. Death may be a castle where "no colours can live." But we have the option to reach there, hitchhiking on dreams, which fly like "humming beetles (not black but colourful), " "hovering over every bloom."