A Scottish Autumn Wednesday

Under the Scottish August air,
bathed in the yellow and tangerine of leaves,
she checks the road for puddles, but
is left with home’s call—a home she grieves—
on Wednesday’s longer eve.

Those Indian summers when didi called her pretty
and troubled her with sour lemonade:
the light, chill and yellow, would see her at home, delayed
by the puddles in which her and Reeva played.

The walk home was no longer than a few minutes,
but didi, ever stout and stoic, stood in her sweat to scold.
Ma in slumber, and dadi knitting, heard not what didi told—
all wry smiles in beige skirts, didi broke into laughter despite her control.

In didi’s journey to the West
she sees her in puddles no more.
Reeva, mother of two, now cleans the skirt her daughter wore.
Summer extends not even to June now, and the winters she ignores.

Didi tells her about snow—
black stroked heaps of snow smothered in yellow and tangerine—
and memories of the humidity at home that tame it not.
In these aliens Scottish corridors where she stands today, snow is nought;
and what August’s left to show, she knows not.
Empty European roads tow her mind to an Eastern home she mourns.

In August, her friends seem to chuckle,
nudge a thud on her shoulder,
and poke at her peculiar halt midway
on the Scottish roads they’ve always seen clean.

Under the air of August’s tickling breeze,
on this fatigued Wednesday eve,
all she’s left with is a memory of home,
a home she grieves.