Cloud Catchers

This cloud sways in free spirits
wrapped around grass stalk
like pearly cotton candy,
pointing at blue-white skies;
Saccharum spontaneum
-- kashful in sweet Bengali,
heralding sarat kal or autumn.

A band of cloud catchers will
bring home a bagful of kashful,
promising to keep them forever.
They will wave in happy play,
until the clouds are distorted,
weak, forgotten to their mother’s
fulko luchi and sada alu chochhori.