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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you for sharing, @1sunflower 🙏

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Delaina J. Miller's avatar

Absolutely beautiful. Thank you. 💞

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you for reading, Delaina. So glad you liked it! 🙏

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Rea de Miranda's avatar

This is beautiful Rajani! 🙏

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Rea. 😍

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Jennifer Wagner's avatar

Beautiful and evocative, Rajani.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Jennifer.

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Depth Charge: Weekly Poetry's avatar

I love your use of questions and haiku here. Such gorgeous and urgent existential inquiries.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Jodi 🙏

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Neil Barker's avatar

Beautiful poetry Rajani! I really like the final one about the cricket calling.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Neil. It was interesting to think what the sounds/ songs are actually for...

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LeeAnn Pickrell's avatar

I love the questions and how this weaves together, the short stanzas with the prose poem stanzas, how they speak to each other.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, LeeAnn.

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Sherry Marr's avatar

My new favourite of yours, Rajani. Your words really grabbed me and drew me in. So beautiful........the hymn of gratitude, the birds. I think birds do feel gratitude, for sun, for blue skies, for worms and bugs to eat. That's why their song is so beautiful to us. This poem is absolutely beautiful and really seeped into my heart. Just lovely.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you, Sherry. I am thinking about your point that birdsong is so sweet because the birds feel joy and gratitude...

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you for sharing @davidperlmutter 🙏

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Marjorie Pezzoli's avatar

🌈🩶

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Marjorie.

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David Kirkby's avatar

We can never literally live each other’s pain - or joy - but words can bring us close.

Rajani, yours have.

“I experiment with becoming. With counting the infinite. With holding the eternal. With knowing what cannot be known. With taking a point of grief and stripping it of dimensions. With adding the immeasurable. With being nothing. “

Best Wishes - Dave

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you, David for your very kind words. Words...poetry...can become a powerful bridge that allows us to reach out and empathize. Appreciate your support.

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Mary Kling's avatar

I lke the mystery in this: " The song plays at the intersection of life and faith. How do I account for what never was? How do I return what can never be? To whom?" Fine writing, Rajani.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Mary. I was in a bit of a writing slump and your prompt brought me the words!

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M Catherine Smythe Zajc's avatar

A floating tapestry of beautiful images and deep longings. I can feel it, I can see it, I can hear it, I can taste it, and I can touch it with grateful fingertips laced in prayer. Namaste! 🕊️🙇🏼‍♀️

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Catherine. Your comments are always uplifting. Much, much appreciated!

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Mahdi Meshkatee's avatar

“To whom?”

That seems to be the raison d’être of this, you desperately wanting to peek behind the curtain and look your monada—the one you directly point your speech to—in the eyes, examine the contours, understand the depths. “Who is this I’m talking to,” along with “who is this talking to me,” are two of the questions I face in repetition.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thank you, Mahdi...yes, there is a need to look in the eye, that which sanctions both flowers and pain...we've all been witnesses (digital at least) to starving and maimed and killed children for a year and a half now...in parallel with consumption excess and material joy...even our own...where do the lines meet? If I had to guess, that's what it is about...but who knows with poems :)

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Susan's avatar

I wrote a long note which looking at the poem again erased. Grrr. I know this quote was in it. "Must I write an ode to this insistent despair?" I've noted that you often add an element of hope, and are always multi-dimensional--here the birds and trees do it The person in despair hears the singing and chirping, knows the intersection of faith and life. I like the prose/haiku structure (haibun) . I love the moments between hope and despair where we see the birds and almost see the sky.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Susan... this form works for me when I can't express everything I want to in a poem and I need more room... hope is needed just to cope with daily despair...even while knowning it may not be true...still wanting to live and wake up and hear the birds...like a mantra for survival.

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Martha Ann Kennedy's avatar

Beautiful, all of it.

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Thanks so much, Martha.

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