Where only the moon Visits
By Shobhana Kumar, Geethanjali Rajan & Sonam Chhoki
ancestral village…
in place of the large home
a patch of wild grass
where sparrows once lived
the shadows of their echoes
covered in dust
among the roadside hoardings
a lone coconut tree
sharing food from the garbage
dogs, cows and bulls
hurtling past
the old stone temple
toxic truck fumes
village well
only the moon comes by
Shobhana Kumar is a poet and translator and writer of non-fiction. Her book of haibun, A Sky Full of Bucket Lists won the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for 2021-2022 and the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award, Honourable Mention, 2021.
Geethanjali Rajan teaches Japanese and English in Chennai, India. She is the author of a book of haikai poetry longing for sun longing for rain (Red River, 2023) and coauthor of the e-book of haikai collaborative rengay Unexpected Gift (Éditions des petits nuages, Canada, 2021) with Sonam Chhoki, Bhutan. She edits haiku at cattails and at Café Haiku.
The Japanese short form poetry resonates with Sonam Chhoki’s Tibetan Buddhist upbringing. She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan’s non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails. Her chapbook of haibun, The Lure of the Threshold was published in May 2021. Mapping Absences, a collaboration of haibun, tanbun and tanka prose with Mike Montreuil was published in 2019. Another collaboration of Japanese short form poetry with Geethanjali Rajan: Unexpected Gift was published in November 2021.