I’m working on a new project, inspired by all the poets I met at the South Asia Institute _Testimonies on Paper_ exhibit. I was listening to them read their beautiful work, and found myself thinking about saris. I’m going to try writing some sari poems, which might turn into a sari poem chapbook? We’ll see.
*****
Someone Fund This Book, Please
I can’t stop thinking about her,
an earnest undergrad,
writing a picture book
to save the world.
She’d learned that if you take
a sari – nothing fancy, old cotton is best –
and fold it over the right number of times
— not two, not four, not six, but eight –
you gain a remarkably effective water filter.
In parts of the world where the babies
are dying, for lack of clean water, the sari
their mother already owns, can save their lives.
She was writing a picture book, because while
the mothers were often illiterate, their children
were in school, and if the book could get into
the children’s hands, and the story into the mother’s
knowledge-base, then everything could change.
Everything can change.
*****
June 26, 2023