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(My ode to Earthquake is an irregular ode. The ode is written in
memory of an earthquake that took place in Gujarat State (Kutch Region) 
of India in the year 2000 on the Republic Day of India on 26th January.)

I

What a day you chose, Grandma Mine!
To quake, to move, to shiver, to shake
Thereby to ravage, to savage, to shatter,
The celebrations of Mother India Republic Day.
A female snake eating her own children!
What bad karma those school children had done?
What configurations of the planets took place
In the natal charts of those thousand killed?

II

Million years ago you jolted and rocked,
Opening up the Atlantic & creating Indian Ocean,
Delinking India from Africa and Sri Lanka.
Those oceans are widening & the Pacific shrinking.
Will North America & Asia drift into each other?
The twelve plates* mate and hate each other,
Caribbean to Cocos & Indian to Eurasian.
Your wanton ways to be taken as blessing in disguise?
Your natural acts as great levelers? Or
HE made the world to fit best to create & destroy.

III

On the scene I met a man, a mattress maker by trade
Living with parents and two toddlers.
With debris under the rickety shelter,
The toddlers lay motionless covered with flies.
The third did not see the light of the day,
Journey made from mother’s womb
To that of the earth,
Amalgamating from dust to dust,
As his wife eight months pregnant
Died when the house collapsed.

Standing now on the roadside,
People throwing food at him from trucks,
The mattress maker without a mattress!
Brooding over the rigmaroles of the politicians,
Remembering armed gangs with choppers,
Cutting the fingers of the dead for a gold ring.

Feeling the tremors and shocks of the quake,
Cries, cracks, quacks fresh in his mind still.


Dr. Ram Mehta
========================================
 Second place winner IN
Contest:In Honor of Constance "Forms of Poetry 101


Today India is celebrating its 64th Independence DAY

* There are twelve plates of our Mother Earth.

Contest:In Honor of Constance "Forms of Poetry 101
ODE
A lengthy lyric poem typically of a serious or meditative nature 
and having an elevated style and formal stanza structure. 
A classic ode is structured in three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, 
and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode 
and the irregular ode also exist.

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