jee•va•nam (life)
Irving, TX
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I walk the trail around White Rock Lake,
where cormorants sit like ghosts on branches,
and chip bags flinch beneath surface glass
unnaturally quiet.
There’s a plastic bottle half-submerged,
like it wanted to drown
but forgot how.
I collect the waste
like I’m piecing together
a body I loved
before I learned what broke it.
Amma used to say “jeevanam”
in the soft hush of morning prayers
life,
not just the heartbeat,
but the why of it.
She’d fill our copper cups
with water from the steel filter,
and say “Drink slowly. It remembers.”
I wonder what this lake remembers.
Microplastics, like grief,
never fully leave.
They nestle in fish gills,
in the stomachs of bluegill
who will never tell us
how it feels
to eat what should have fed them.
Maybe the lake is like my grandmother
quiet until her bones creak with history.
She used to oil her hair with coconut and jasmine,
speak in riddles
about rivers that swallowed empires,
oceans that held secrets
deeper than language.
I asked her once,
“What happens if the water dies?”
She paused,
eyes brimming like the goddesses in her pooja room
and whispered,
“So do we.”
There is no metaphor for extinction
that doesn’t sound like prayer.
But we kneel anyway
gloved hands gripping trash bags,
children with chalk drawing turtles on pavement,
parents handing out cold oranges in the sun.
We do not call ourselves heroes.
We just return.
Some plant saplings near the shoreline.
Some teach others how to see again
to really see.
We name each cleanup day like a ritual:
not mourning,
but memory in motion.
This is not a love poem.
It is an apology letter
folded into a lotus
and placed at the altar of the sea.
Still,
we offer what we have:
bare palms,
a shared sky,
a stubborn belief
that jeevanam is still possible
that the water remembers love, too.
Translations:
Jeevanam – Telugu word for life
Reflection
Reflection
Jeevanam (life) began during a walk around White Rock Lake. I noticed how the stillness of the water was interrupted not by waves but by small microplastics floating around as if they belonged there. That image haunted me. I didn’t want to write a poem simply about pollution. I wanted to write about loss, fond (and not so fond) memories, and the complicated love we feel for a damaged world. In this way, this poem is part elegy and also part offering. I wanted this poem to become a ritual, not of mourning, but of return. It’s rooted in my cultural background whether it be in my native language Telugu, in Amma’s prayers, or in the act of working together to make a difference. Through this project, I’ve learned that connecting to nature doesn’t always begin with the cold hard facts. Sometimes it begins with language: asking the lake what it remembers or listening to my grandmother’s countless fables. This poem became a space where environmental justice could exist alongside ancestry, spirituality, and community action. Putting pen to paper helps me find my voice. It reminds me that even small actions can contribute to the fight against the climate crisis. Restoration begins with remembrance. The water remembers. And hopefully, so can we.