Shadow Feathers (after Pravy Jha’s The Parrot with Three Painters)

	Shadow Feathers (after Pravy Jha’s The Parrot with Three Painters)
	
	ART BY SMOKELONG
     She paints just the tail of the green bird,
	It's the color of the monsoon seepage of the walls
	where the paint lifts from the plaster. 
	
	She found it after her morning Chai
	in the Kohbar room filed with Lotus blooms
	and fish circling one another eternally,
	in the corner among the rise of Bamboo
	stretching among a pastel eastern sun.
	
	There in the middle, 
	just beyond the bird
	decomposing into layers of 
	blue and yellow pigments
	was a small suitcase 
	and her daughter just behind it.
	
	The mother hands the girl a torch.
	The daughter holds it.  
	The beams settle across the silent bird.
	       
	The mother begins mixing her paints:
	the green first, followed by black 
	and finally, the thin white line 
	that forms the edge of a tail feather. 
	
	Outside are the shouts 
	of the guava cart seller.
	In the distance 
	a train horn drifts faintly 
	across the jaundice afternoon sky. 
	
	The daughter starts to speak.
	The mother draws another feather
	almost identical to the other. 
	
	The daughter sees 
	the mother’s wedding photograph
	hanging in the next open room—
	the garland around her neck
	heavy enough to alter her spine’s posture.
	
	The mother continues 
	adding shadow feathers.