An Imploration
Behind those two oil lamps for evening prayer,
Lit in the names of your husband and son,
Keep one for this bleak man whose calm is done,
And pray its beamlets reach me through the air.
For long ago, when I was stripped of care,
Your lamp-like spirit turned my room from dun
To amber and thereafter made its run
To brighten up its walls that stood all bare.
Since now your soul illumes a different room,
Implore the Param Brahm to raise His staff
And send His light for me on your behalf,
Whose shining, though for now may oust this gloom,
Ask Him to grant a birth in which my fate
Will see our joined lamps on your puja plate.
*Puja: Worship
Param Brahm: God
Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. When he is not writing, he can be found strolling the hills surrounding his homestead. His poems have appeared in Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Westward Quarterly, among others.