The Om - Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming

My Tanty used to sing/pray

evening ragas to the Earth Goddess

morning oblations to the Sun God

Now my Aunty prays

that I find salvation in the cross

in the church that has freed her

from indenture, from coolieness

Yet I seek freedom

in the indefinable

the OM

the puja breath that expands

my rib cage

with blessed pitchpine smoke

into an oval

large as the cosmic egg

The sea breath

OM

That echoes

In the conch shell

Blowing across the Caroni

Infinite like green plains

Of sugarcane

Or a milky river veiling

The face of the goddess

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Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (born 1960) Trinidad and Tobago

Source: Zócalo Poets

Poet’s glossary:

• Coolieness: East Indian Indentured Labourers who were brought to the West Indies, and their descendents are sometimes called ‘coolie’, as an insult. In my poem, ‘Coolieness’ refers to the East Indian culture that still exists in Trinidad and Tobago.
• Puja (Bhojpuri Hindi): A personal, familial, or public Hindu prayer service or worship.
• Caroni: A river in Trinidad and Tobago. The river plains, called the Caroni Plains were once used for sugar cane farming.