An image has stayed on in my mind from a very young age… There was this lady whom I used to see at her window every evening when I passed by her house. She looked the picture of loneliness. Much later I heard about a school friend who had been widowed very young and was now living a forlorn life adhering to the customs of her community. And one day when I saw a crow as described in the poem, somehow all these pictures came together and spilled out in this poem. Enforced Isolation by Shernaz Wadia swamped by the darkness as it grew cawing, from cable to cable he flew, loathe to return to an empty nest gloom framed the teary-eyed widow as she stood at her lonesome window - a still-life painting, tight-lipped incidental pin-points on society’s map she and her ilk, drained of life’s sap live in forced seclusion the crow still has the freedom of the sky; consigned to living death, she must cry in the eerie confines of her soul not for he...
Women's Spiritual Poetry