Pause
a crow much wet by rain falling in massive subtractions
almost a dark shadow perched on a wire with washings
beak dripping words now halted by fatigues of itineraries
neck subdued by water’s weight feathers drizzling alone
looked straight over the sky like an unending black page
tinged with lightening fissures trees like Sufis hung long
this creature craved time to let this weather take a break
form a language of whirling puddles and of drowned grass.
Rizwan Akhtar’s debut collection of poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press.He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.