Origin Stories - Lakshman Bulusu

    The Best Memorial 		
    by Lakshman Bulusu
                       (On Robert Frost farm in Derry, NH)

    Derry farm bears a boy’s will,
    as he poetized his experiences on this farm.
    It retains its originality along with the verses.

    The kitchen with old cups and plates,
    The dining table with forks and spoons,
    the bedrooms, and more--
    each sight of them seems to evoke a verse.
    And complementing this,
    the ink bottle and beside it the pen with its nib.

    Each sight surrounding the farm
    seems to capture the light of those days,
    of a strolling bard of New Hampshire,
    on this farm.

    This homestead with its farm,
    bordered by a rocky fence,
    breathes an air of fragrant yester years,
    to immortalize itself as the best memorial,
    as ageless as the poet and his poems.

Origin Stories – The Best Memorial

I wrote the poem “THE BEST MEMORIAL”, inspired by my visit to the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH. My interest in poetry dates decades back when reading Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Frost and Whitman as part of my literature course in high school in India. I wrote my first poem while in high school and since then never looked back. When I came to the US in the early nineties, my fascination to visit the self-termed “poetic” places took me to a tour of the Robert Frost Farm in 1998. I was amazed when I saw how the place was preserved so well along with things that were in place. Each of them had attention to detail with labels, cards, and notes alongside them. And then there was “the ink bottle and beside it the pen with its nib” – a pleasant reminder of Frost’s fluency with his nib. This essentially captured a boy’s will and the light of those days, of a strolling bard of New Hampshire. I read Frost again and again during my free time and it gives me a kind of satisfaction, especially when reading a poet of such caliber, “as ageless as the poet and his poems”.

Bio

Lakshman Bulusu is an international poet, author, and educator. He is published in over thirty poetry journals in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Taiwan, and India. He invented the STAR poem genre and MIRACLE STAR poem genre in 2016 and 2021 respectively. He has participated in poetry readings across the US, UK, Australia, Netherlands, and India. He is based in Princeton, NJ, USA. He was an author feature for OpenDoor Poetry Magazine in February 2022. He was a semi-finalist in the Wine Cellar Press Order of Chaos Poetry contest for New Poetic Forms for his invented STAR poem genre.