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The Daily Verse
To make The Wise Owl more dynamic, we have introduced The Daily Verse, a segment where we upload poetry all days of the week. Just send in a poem to editor@thewiseowl.art
October 2026
Theme: Ode to the Ordinary
Monday, 12th October 2026
An Encomium on coffee
By Jahnavi Gogoi
Light rain, summer’s end, I pour
hot water into the French press.
My thoughts swirling
like tornadoes, soften gently as they
submerge, steep, baptize.
All the pessimism
of the night, my terrors now
transmuted into a tawny brew.
I taste sudden joy,
along with hints of smoke, nuts, berries.
My morning now is caramel hued.
At the first sip, I
understand the wild prancing
of Kaldi’s goats, enjoying another libation,
I grow keen
for a conversation in and around a
Qahveh Khaneh, traveling backwards
in time to
Sumatra and Sulawesi. Marveling at
the boom and bust of kismet. Raising again
the mug to my lips,
I grow certain about the virtuous leading
the way. I am in fact now draining
a chalice,
my kitchen transforms into a place of worship.
Opening the window to the chants of wild,
unshackled birds,
my confidence grows in poetic justice.
The end of tyranny, the ascendancy of good sense.
The dark always
giving way to light. The poets everywhere
sparking revolutions. Stepping out into the
teeming streets,
I hear the low, soft, rustling of the trees,
and for a spell, I too am liberated like
the wind.
Kaldi’s goats: The legend of the goatherd in Ethiopia whose goats first ate the coffee berries and became very active.
Qahveh Khaneh: A coffeehouse originating in the 15th and 16th centuries across the middle eastern countries.
Sumatra and Sulawesi: Indonesian islands known to grow coffee in the past. Many nations were built on the power of coffee.
About the Author
Jahnavi Gogoi is a poet based in Canada. She is best known for her Japanese poetry forms but also enjoys writing longer verse. She is an avid reader and loves to fill all spaces with books . She lives in the little town of Ajax with her husband and daughter.
Friday, 9th October 2026
The Extraordinary Pause
By Ketaki Mazumdar
my life this day drifts
like autumn leaves
in a slow-motion dance
orange and gold and brown…
tints glittering…
the River of life meanders…
every bend carrying nature's memories…
the message spreading…
it's time to begin the great retreat
before the time to begin again!
Wisdom whispers a maturity song
the richness of life withers,
a chill sets in
a nippiness knocks on faces…
I watch the squirrels scampering,
gathering nuts for survival
bright eyed, bushy tails swinging…
I watch the children jumping happily on piled up leaves…
of different shades…
their colours of woollens and scarves red and blue and green…
flapping a life of their own…
red cheeks glowing…
ordinary happenings bringing on smiles…
the gardener rakes in leaves and twigs
a burning bonfire crackles
I roast large jacket potatoes…
smother them with salt and pepper and butter…
melting and drooling happiness…
I pause… loving this extraordinary joy…
even as the season packs up its trunk…
About the Author
Award winning Indian Poet, Ketaki Mazumdar, delves deeply into Nature, life, mysticism, culture and spirituality. She writes authentically keenly observing every nuance of life. Born in Kolkata, she now resides in Mumbai surrounded by her plants, flowers and birds. A prolific writer, her published books “Woodsmoke and Embers”, “Toasted Orange Embers”, and “Whispered Secrets”, have won her numerous literary awards and appreciation, internationally and in India. Her poems are visual in context and deeply touches the readers with quiet strength, empathy and soulful conviction.
Thursday, 8th October 2026
Half-Past Two
By Debarati Sen
It’s half-past two. The room is held
by ghosts of unfinished poems.
Rafi drifts from the radio, soft as promises,
while Kafka waits marooned by my pillow.
An ember pulses against the dark;
ash falls like punctuation,
smoke twirls around an archaic word.
Past the balcony railing, a stranger
breaks the quiet with Kishore Kumar—
careless, loud, alive.
The diesel fades into the asphalt,
leaving only the cold terracotta courtyards.
The syllables demand closure
but the moon leans through the glass, hungry,
drinking down every metaphor I build.
The first crow claims the parapet;
the sky sheds its heavy, ink-stained coat,
leaving the city to the living,
and letting the ghosts lie down.
About the Author
Debarati Sen is a recipient of the ‘Poiesis Award for Excellence in Poetry -2023’, and the Sylvia Plath Women's Literary Award. A poet from Kolkata, she writes both long verses and haiku. She has recently been declared the winner of NaPoWriMo 2023 by the Elite Book Awards. She has published two solo poetry collections and has contributed to more than 10 anthologies. Her haiku has been published in various international journals. Her latest collection of poems, Saudade, was brought out by Penprints in 2022.
Wednesday 7th October 2026
Buffered
By Kashiana Singh
I press play.
The sound of your innocence
travels through nautical miles
then stops.
A small circle turns
and turns
in the middle of the screen.
Below it, the world burns
in several languages at once.
Sirens translate
what prayers cannot.
A child folds a name
into a flag.
Someone carries water
in a yellow bucket.
Someone searches the rubble
with bare hands.
The image freezes.
I wait.
The circle turns.
Outside my window,
morning arrives
without permission.
Still, the circle turns
a little wheel of waiting,
holding everything
I cannot reach.
I do not know
what to do with the distance.
So I keep the screen lit.
I let the kettle cool.
I wait.
From another room,
a Bollywood song plays
jaise shaamon ke sawere, tere paas main
the kettle boils over
with a longing to arrive
without a loading circle
between us.
The song keeps playing.
The screen keeps turning.
About the Author
When Kashiana is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship in her daily life. Her poetry carries her various geopolitical homes across India and the United States. Kashiana serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News and is President of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Her poetry collections include Crushed Anthills by Yavanika Press(2020), Woman by the Door by Apprentice House Press(2022), and Witching Hour by Glass Lyre Press(2024)
Tuesday, 6th October 2026
Driving West at Sunset
By Deborah Bennett
in the trapped light of memory
and blinded by the sun
i could not see the cars ahead
only the bridge walls
blazing orange
shining needles on the lake water
the day after you died
the beach gulls flew like kites
the wind's hysterical
masts blew over
white stones and pigeons
in the shallows
and distant boats with all
the edges softened
a dog stood in the gray-green waves
barking into the foaming void
into the purple smudge of
darkness on the horizon
the brick facades becoming gold
the air thick and warm as
sun-cooked tea
on the street the red and white
streams of carlight
and el light and neon light
shone over lamp posts
rising like knight's javelins
helicopters hovered like fireflies
beside the yellow windows of
stern steep steel canyons
full of the deep moan of buses
and weedy lots and green
bottled curbs and cracked
sidewalks and plastic bags
fluttering in the trees like
battered flags in the sunset
sky only barely containing
the endless blue universe
i could not say was beautiful
but it was
About the Author
Deborah A. Bennett lives in small town USA, where she enjoys gardening and writing haiku. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications, and was Long-listed for The Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Award for Individual Poems in 2022.
Monday, 5th October 2026
Farming
By Paulami Sengupta
Chirping emojis disappear like birds.
Our respective mounds of loneliness erupt, then go ash cold.
My thoughts, climbing up the tree like a monkey, can fall to the ground
with a soft thud.
Your eyes are pellucid,
adding water to my blood
and the days in between.
In corridors of words washed and dried,
I harvest our chats.
Tiny huts store them on my old device.
About the Author
Paulami Sengupta is an editor and translator based in Kolkata. Her poems (in English and Bengali) and translations have been published in The Dreaming Machine, Nether, Cold Noon, and Scent of Rain: Remembering Jayanta Mahapatra (ed. Ashwani Kumar, Red River). Her recent collection of Bengali poems (under her pen name Anjashi) is titled Bayosandhir Haraf (Boibhashik, 2021). Her first collection of poems in English, Maximum Love in Patel Nagar (Red River), was published in 2023. She is also on the editorial team at Red River.
Friday, 2nd October 2026
The Alchemy of Light
By Kavya Mahajan
Somewhere between the ash and the arising,
a quiet miracle keeps choosing to begin —
the seed that trusts the dark enough to open,
the dawn that trusts the night to let it in.
I have learned that joy is not the absence
of everything that ever asked me to break,
but the tender, stubborn art of gathering
gold from the very hands that learned to shake.
Every wound I wore became a window.
Every silence taught my voice to sing.
Even the winter, bare and unforgiving,
was only earth rehearsing how to spring.
I am made of every sunrise I doubted
would find its way across my closing eyes,
and still it came — soft, certain, unrelenting —
proof that even breaking hearts can rise.
So I hold this life like light through amber,
each scar a story polished into art,
and I keep becoming, keep believing
that grace was always growing in my heart.
We are not the pain that tried to hold us.
We are the bloom that pain could not erase —
a universe of small and radiant courage
learning, always, how to love this place.
About the Author
Kavya Mahajan loves reading and writing poetry
Thursday, 1 October 2026
The Small Steel Chair That I Wouldn’t Share Even With My Mates
By Malabika Mitra
the small steel chair in the palm of my hand
filled with memories of grasses in that rectangular patch
from which sprung scrawny dahlias in winter
in rickety about-to-drop stems, when girls and boys
gossiped, laughed, romanced, like Nagpur oranges
sweet-sour, while a bold eyed the young lecturer;
the small steel chair scraped the palm of my hands
not blisters, just itchy and red - did you know
it was made of stuff from which dental braces are made
in that summer of stolen glances
almost see-through chikankaris
artificially coloured ice-lollies
sold for five rupees just across the college gate
under the shade of two huge trees, banyan was it…
the small steel chair rusted a bit
monsoon flooded, made uncomfortable
the garden patch - fungus, moss, pedes of all varieties
where once eyes met; stories like lemonade
sour, with a hint of bitter after taste,
- fleeting memories filling occasional empty space
About the Author
Dr. Malabika Mitra, is a former newsreader with Doordarshan and went on to head corporate communications in Chennai. An alumna of National University of Singapore, she pursued a doctoral degree on a feminist topic. She has co-authored two books on the Bodos of Assam, edited three books for English honours students, wrote numerous articles and book reviews and has been frequently anthologised. Intertwined, a collection of poems, is her sixth book.