FIRST LESSON FROM GRANDMA

When I was born, they say
Unlike other babes -
crying aloud,
proclaiming their arrival,
into this world
No voice, cries, weeping,
sobbing, came out.
Keeping my mouth shut,
I lay on a sheet on the floor
with eyes wide open.
Baffled they stood around?
Deaf and dumb or both?
All stood confounded,
A white child
in a black family,
milky white
like my father.
A shapeless head,
Nose flattened,
Resembling a Chinese nose.
Head elongated and triangular
pyramid like.
Baffled and sad all stood.
Grandma sat beside me on the floor,
she gave a shape to my
shapeless nose,
Her sleights of hand like that of a magician
like a flower stem
made it slender and beautiful
with two little nostrils.
A Midas Touch she had.
With both her hands,
like a master-craftsman,
or a sculptor,
an artist,
she gave my head a shape,
That also cute, attractive,
No voice came out of me,
my mouth kept shut with no voice coming out.
Baffled and angry
she pinched me hard on my thigh,
A last resort,
that clicked.
The first pinch, first pain and my first lesson.
I cried aloud, non-stop,
to the joy and embarrasement
of all present,
kept on weeping,
No amount of cajoling or lullabies helped.
She picked me up,
placed gently by my mother's side,
sucking her breast
calmly and delightfully.
My cries stopped for the time-being
and fell into a deep nice sleep.
A precious lesson that was,
even today,
in this soulless,
heartless world,
whenever I feel helpless,
and needy,
I keep on weeping.
Sorry, unlike in the past
Nobody is there to
calm my nerves.
Hence I keep on crying
It seems endless
No full stop either.
Grandma gone,
Her first pinch
A reminder of
the shape of things to come.
Her farsightedness,
incredible it was.