Silver Branch series:
July 2025
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a widely-published Australian artist and poet of South Indian heritage. She is the author of "Patchwork Fugue" (Atomic Bohemian Press UK, 2024), "A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys" (winner of The Little Black Book Competition, Hedgehog Poetry Press UK, 2024), and three digital micro-chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project (US). She has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. She won the 66th Moon Prize awarded by Writing in a Woman's Voice Journal, the 2024 Don Bank Short Fiction Cup, and the Winged Muse's Writing Competition in March 2025. She lives and works in Lindfield, New South Wales, on traditional Gammeragal land.
Social media links: X @oormilaprahlad Instagram: www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings
Website: https://poetry.oormila.com/
Sunrise at the Taj Mahal
In persimmon skies,
the winter sun blooms.
A dazzling mohur floats
behind a dance of demoiselle cranes.
The marble paean to devotion
shimmers in the river,
Rose-gold, breathing in
a millennial dawn,
Dusting the land with the enchantment,
Of an Emperor’s everlasting love.
Kodak moment
Her first steady step landed,
My baby squeals and twirls, hands-free,
A hurtling Gulliver
in the kingdom of her toys,
The buds of her fists flower
into undulating starfish.
I snap this Kodak moment -
One soft footfall for baby,
The world attained, for mama.
Kintsugi grace
after Amy Lowell’s ‘Middle Age’
Like candy apple—glossy and glazed—
is the ruby surface of my ageing heart,
dawn-lit awe polished to gleam,
clefts from youth filled in gold,
battle cracks lined—survivor veins
of kintsugi grace.
I am a gilded skater
sojourning on silver blades
poised in the amber hour,
sun-ringed
breath crystallising,
cleaving ice
in conscious arcs,
every filament
of my sinews enlightened,
remembering
motion
precision
fulfillment.
Self portrait as a paradox
I am
a spectral whorl—
bird-dispersed on Nile-green streams,
buoyed on the breeze,
both bat and butterfly,
both following and fleeing
both unfurling and unraveling,
branches and shoots,
hope, an inflorescence
on my crown,
grit, a garnet net
knitted to my pulse
naked in the hostile hail of:
interloper
trespasser
weed
I am
both wandering root and chameleon flower,
the vigilant Sirius
and peregrine phantom,
borderless and open-hemmed—
a patchwork of multitudes.
But in all my contradictions
I promise
only love
no menace no malice
I pose only love.
Samara’s plea
You—the winged seed,
an airborne enigma,
the half-presence
caught on the last lashes
of woolgathering eyes.
Often a footnote
an afterthought,
a penumbral wisp blown
to the brink of a blurred sky.
Seen glossed over forgotten
Yet you persist—
lifting above the mist,
your lacework arms furbished,
convivial phrases
carved on your sac,
brindled threads
draping your back,
to test your wings
in a newer breeze,
dispersing hope
in the pollen
of your two-syllabled pleas:
I’m here I breathe see me
*Samara: winged seeds, also called whirlybirds, symbolic of courage, hope, and adaptability.
Through the Green Gate
Four chambers of a single heart
folded into fanlight—
panes of hunter green
sparkling, spinning
in one festooned chakra*.
A vignette of beatitude—
this hem of pearly bulbs
the ruffle of laughter beneath
the eiderdown of fairy-wrens,
bathed in sun, deliquescing
to liquid moon.
How to give fitting thanks?
Glasses clink to the boon
of familial warmth
simple bounties—
pastries, pies, and ginger beer,
the carnival dark lighting up
the open birdcage of the sky
its plumes and passerines,
as a child’s balloon
floats heavenwards
to form
a vanilla Venus.
chakra: (noun) energy wheel in Indian spiritual practice.
The heart chakra is green.
Piopiotahi
Granite ridges splintered
into fingers of fjords
by a demigod’s axe—
jade curtains parting to reveal
primordial darkness
bridal tulle of skipping streams,
opaline tears and glacial falls,
the whispers of elder gods
weaving waves and veils
of mist, and silver beech lace
cliffs smothered in moss
and upturned roots
of Rata trees, crimson flowerheads
holding tales of days when all
was molten rock and hope,
valleys echoing with the song
of the single piopio*,
lake and sky—buffed mirrors
of buoyant blue
floating clouds of cotton wool
rustling a blanket
of amber sandflies
over freshwater mingling
with tannin streams—
boundless, all-knowing,
and a deity lying beneath
this ancient confluence,
twirling his adze,
gyrating in joy.
*piopio: song thrush
Manali ‘97
Awakening,
in birling rosettes,
December’s needlepoint rows—
pleated sleet
on Himalayan knolls.
Klein-blue panes
dappled with rime
shiver within mahogany jambs,
shielding from tempests—
a glass globe throbbing
in a milky white out.
Far away, the foothills twinkle
in the feathery flurry
of drooping dendrites,
the thrum of tinsel flakes
ruffling from the dome
of an unlatched heaven,
blizzards flinging open
crystal gates
to a vast glacial paradise.
Selenography
Someday, I will return to lunar maria,
banks lined with regolith,
to watch the two-pronged spill
of currents—
brackish whirlpools churning
into freshwater veins.
Home a fading archipelago
of empty tulip shells,
grottos filled with ghost songs,
voices of seafarers,
herons, and oyster-catchers.
Seekers of ocean jewels.
wait for tidal pull
to bare the bounty of fertile flesh,
variegated threads
shivering on the loom—
gibbous knots and crescent tambours,
a silken scarf of sea
sewn with skeins of silver twine.
White swan at Northam
A cloudy teardrop
on the tidal marsh,
glissading down—
a sonata in pearl,
spider silk plumes
recurved
like Casablanca lilies.
Ambush at three
Basilisk clouds
crowd around the sun
snuffing out
promissory rays—
wrath of purple nimbus
yields to tears
hurled
at silver chimes,
and all is erased
in childhood amnesia:
gale-torn umbrellas
of Monstera leaves,
disrobed flowers,
the chittering
of rain.
Mare Tranquillitatis
Moon-spun,
young love spreads its wings
like damselflies
in a gestational dream—
promise of oceans
in a basalt wilderness
where alluvial hearts
incubate passion
thicker
than blood
sweeter
than water.
September spires
Spring tiptoes in
on the shamrock green,
wisps of thistle
and khaki weed.
Wings emerge in sparring blur
from the cider mist
of apple blossoms,
charmeuse silk on honeycomb
filled with kiss
of translucent sun.
And the murmuring meadow folds
in fragmented light-spill
tessellation of wind,
the breathing mirage of a shrine—
a monument of vivid wings
a ziggurat of dragonflies.
Advent’s end
for Tom Thorpe
// I dream of you
in black and white corrugations
of magpie-larks, soaring
in this antipodean Yuletide.
// Lavender buds—tell me what you know
of the lake of grace, the mercy that flows
in the stippling strokes of the cosmic figure
enshrined in beveled glass.
// Smile on me—
like peace-armour,
like truth-lanterns.
// Gone. But never effaced—
you return, robed in the peach warmth
of sundown, mauve florets festooning
your halo.
// You whisper of the patina of faith—
of prayers salvaging raveled horizons,
how love is a lucent lighthouse
baring its mortal chest,
resilient, unafraid,
of the vast unknown.
Imaging
Charting the flux
of a drifting buoy,
a decofoam sphere floating
in the ocean-grey of an imaging screen—
mammary reefs awash
in fibrous waves,
maritime maps
of calcified islands
dense atolls dotting
an epithelial shoreline.
A single marbled orb.
Ticking tsunami—
technician’s fingers typing phrases
ominous in their ambiguity,
a spectrum uneasily wide:
-
the benign nautilus
of an inert dwarf star
-
the grave detonation
of a live grenade
bracing
for definitive verdicts
yet to come.
Bye boy
for Zen
Paws of dust—
panting shadow
of an ebony ghost
ripples the thimbleweed.
A dragonfly wheels
on a tropean wind—
a seraph alighting
in the protean blue,
sailing off the messa
into canine heaven
on a wing
of leaf and bark.
The hunt
Ma’at ascends, arms lined with mauve-grey quills,
shielding papyrus moons. Holder of truth, embrace
this ebony lightness—cloud of inky ostrich plumes.
Alabaster noons implode—cocoons of gold,
as the sun, a skilled engraver, chisels outlines
of flightless birds—-friezes of fervent pursuits—-
and the figure of a boy Pharaoh blazes across
the bosom of a sapphire valley—
glistening arrows threading breath
on the forehead of a gilded fan.
(first published Black Bough Poetry - Tutankhamun special- Wonderful Things.)
Repose
Heady notes of eucalyptus waft as night folds
mammoth wings among the sycamores.
Listen. The clatter of ivory clappers deepens—
coral pulse rustling in tamarisk blooms.
Ghostly flourish— trumpets rouse citrus reeds
billowing by the Nile. Cartouches point the way—-
mystic portals—aurelian afterlife, as he,
living image of Amun, slumbers,
a trembling floret in the sand—
Osiris-like, for all of eternity.
(first published Black Bough Poetry - Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things)
Lament
Solitary oak in the plaintive thrum of snow—
winter’s fallen antler.
The train to Thirroul
Autumn showers—the color of moss and frayed mittens. They mute the light, blur the windows. In the eucalyptus forest, ferns unfurl like lace, wistful and wild. The train hurtles forward, swaying with the weight of its journey—a whip of steel cutting across the dust like a defiant spine. A belt of green appears beside the tracks like an astral projection. The land softens, slipping into a cave, warm and ancient, like a pulsing birth canal. The blue here is otherworldly. Pavonine blue comes closest. At Thirroul, the sea is menacing. A rough and restless leviathan, grinning with foam—white snarl against turbid surf. I have moved far from the waters I once knew—swelling wings of grey folding in on themselves, murky with regret. Now, when I close my eyes, they return—layered and overlapping, like several seas at once. And time is no longer linear, but a gyrating coil—shifting, disappearing, reappearing elsewhere.
In a Coup of Light
Like a disgruntled lover slipping away in the night, the moon disappears without a whisper of goodbye. I shudder beneath the twilight sky. Winds shift in crisscrossed lightning—sharp and ravenous. I am trapped too deep in this maelstrom, this wild, inclement fight against clouds colliding, heavy with fury. By the dunes, three eucalyptus trees bend, their trunks groaning like ghosts held too long in limbo. They tremble in the gale’s grip, limbs creaking, on the brink of fracture. Gusts sweep through the garden like merciless bandits, tugging at roots, flinging leaves like threats. I forget every cautionary word, and crouch beneath branches, breathing in the thick scent of sap, waiting for the first drop. Then, it rages. Stinging needles, sharp and metallic, falling without pause. No mercy. No softness. Only trilling rain, descending in a coup of light.
The woman who tastes with her eyes
I have always been the strange one— the woman who tastes with her eyes. I imagine the flavour of lavender frosting as glacier-blue—aloof, and alien, the flicker of synesthesia that lives only in the mouth of memory. But when I chew the buds off the stalks, they are bitter and astringent. I remember walking through a lavender farm in Otago once, hand in hand with my love. The fields stretched endlessly, rows of violet fading to beryl beneath the hoary mountains. We moved like flannel moths, subdued and soundless, in the perfume diffusing in the air. I don’t remember how the honey tasted, or what the confections were made of. Only the diminished echoes of the flowers, their sweetness hanging against a sky dyed in bruised amethyst. I have never been a baker. I’m an artist measuring life in color. Still, today, I sprinkled a pinch of pollen over the cake, and watched it settle into the soft dunes of cream. The mauve of each mound made my mouth water. I’ve always been the strange one—the woman who tastes with her eyes.
Oormila on her writing:
"I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. It’s how I make sense of the world—its joy, its sadness, and everything in between. Recurring themes in my work include memory, identity, ancestral ties, the body, grief, and loneliness. On the page, my writing voice tends to be serious and brooding, often leaning into the lyrical. On stage, it’s the complete opposite. I love weaving in humor and elements of stand-up. Spoken word is a relatively new pursuit—one I’ve been exploring on the Sydney scene over the past year."
"Poetry helps me understand what I’m feeling. I write poetry because it’s the one place I can be myself. It’s where I can be fearless. Sometimes, writing feels like a way of breathing. My other passion is painting, which connects seamlessly with my writing. I’m an impressionist—I see everything in vibrant, distilled colour. When I feel creatively blocked, I turn to art. It almost always leads me back to writing. I rarely start with a clear plan. More often, I begin with an image, a memory, or a single line I can’t shake. From there, it becomes a stream-of-consciousness experiment. I follow the thread and let the poem reveal itself through the process of drafting. Poetry keeps me connected—to myself and to others."
"Nearly all the incredible people I’ve met over the past two decades have entered my life through writing and art, both on and offline. And when someone reads something I’ve written and says, “I felt that too,” my heart expands in ways I can’t describe. That’s when I remember why I do this. Why it matters. Why it's worth it".
