It rained incessantly for days together

Inundating every nook and corner

Like an angry lion it raged over the plains

Helplessly everyone stood glaring at it

Completely lost, clueless of an escape

For a rescue they waited till evening

Circumventing their watery death eyeing them hungrily!

A Mother hugging her child on a rock stood

On and on rose the sea-

A mad frenzied charging bull it was!

The frightened Mother wailed out sorrowfully

‘Oh God please stop this relentless downpour

Not for me but for this hapless child

A bestowment of your own’

But her importunate prayers

In the rumbling, reverberating thunder died.

The ferocious waves guzzled up everything

Spreading desolation far and wide

Mother and child’s life being at stake

She implored and pleaded for mercy, to no avail

A starved wave swept her away-

On the rock she quickly stood the frightened child

Scared to death helplessly it looked around

All at sea in the midst of that brutal sea

Dumbfounded, to her mother she called out

While the threatening roaring waves towards her raced

Oh please on the child have mercy!

But the onrushing cold demonic waves reached her-

To her mama, the frail, petrified child screamed

‘Oh Mama, please save me

The sea with it is taking me.’

‘O please save her! You can still save her!’

She, no sooner cried

Than the gluttonous waves shrouded her

The thunderous uproar drowned her piteous cry

Ruthlessly it carried her, far, far away

Up and down the waves she went

As if in a palanquin

Lifelessly she was all calm and quiet-

No breath in her was left

A sudden deathly silence wrapped the air

The rains stopped

The satiated water started receding

Rushing violently on its winding way

Like a python digesting its ingested feed!

O cruel, cruel sea, once again rise and-

The innocent child, do deliver!

                                                                                ~Anuradha S. Bannore

                                                                                     Vadodara, India