Shari Wagner's first book of poems, Evening Chore, was published last year by Cascadia Publishing House, and a group of her poems appears in the anthology, A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry (University of Iowa Press). For the past several years, Shari has been writing poems about sacred places in Indiana and persona poems in the voices of historical people with connections to the state. Shari lives with her husband and two daughters in Westfield, IN (USA).
Folk dancers perform bhangra at a farm in Patiala in anticipation of Baisakhi. — Photo by Rajesh Sachar (Tribune)
Devotees taking a dip on Baisakhi at the sarovar in Gurdwara Dukhniwaran Sahib in Patiala. — Photo by Rajesh Sachar.
(Tribune)
A young nihang astride two horses at a show during Baisakhi celebrations at Talwandi Sabo. — Photo Kulbir Beera
(Tribune)
Baisakhi
- Shari Wagner
These dancers drive oxen
with the same flick
of an invisible whip
that has startled space
for a thousand years.
The same smooth sweep
of an unseen machete
sings through the winter wheat.
The bride dressed in red
rushes toward a groom
who has died in her arms
a hundred times before.
We’re in Indianapolis,
but in this dark, crowded room
where the face of an old man
radiates more true light
than the halogen bulb
behind him,
I’m a pilgrim in the Punjab,
eating rice and curried goat
with a friend who says
we’ve all been here before
and that’s a source for so much
pure exuberance
I feel it in every hand
that holds mine longer
than a handshake.
The drums draw children
to the stage and everyone else
to a floor that blossoms bright
with Sikh turbans, kurtas
and scarves. In the beat
that goes on without sense
of time outside the circle,
no one turns to just one partner
but bows to the divine spark
within every heart that throbs
tonight inside this place
where we come home
as long-lost sisters and brothers.
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