Raj Sharma

Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2021

A Morning at Milwaukee

Raj Sharma

Sipping coffee, I look out my lakeside cottage window at the Michigan, its cobalt blue flaring suddenly to the gold of a new day, while the geese go gliding away to test new waters. A morning like this calls for opening ourselves to the real import of the quotidian events of the day. Like watching the landlady across the lawns in her kitchen as she taps her feet to the galloping rhythm of Beethoven’s “Rage over a Lost Penny”. All she does is to cook an everyday breakfast, yet she flavours it with her elan, and her deep caring for those she loves. Thus might each morning of mine begin, by pouring all my love into the meanest tasks. Thus might I light up the drab, common day.

Raj Sharma lives in North Carolina and is a retired senior professor of English who has worked at universities in India, Middle East and USA. Published work includes two collections of short stories, A Strange Wind Blowing (2019) and In My Arms (2000) and a collection of poems, No Season for Grief (2017). Over forty poems and short stories have appeared in magazines like Grey Sparrow, North Dakota Quarterly, Crossways, The American Aesthetic, SNReview. South Jersey Underground, The Monarch Review, Folly, JD Review, The Fine Line, TWJ Magazine, The Missing Slate, Exercise Bowler, Rock and Sling, Ascent Aspirations, Dr TJ Eckleburg Review, New Mercury Magazine and others.