MY POLE STAR: A POETIC TRIBUTE TO RABINDRANATH TAGORE He was my River, my Hill, my Forest deep He was my Captain, my Sail, my Ship He was my Shelley, my Keats, my Neruda or Whitman He was my red Comet, my Star and my Sun Camelia and Rhododendron of Shillong blazed his eye His window was his horizon, his blue sky He'll wait for me, silent in my heart and mind To inherit the treasure trove he left behind. © Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee My Mother In my childhood I never knew She was my mother I knew she was my comfort, my anger, my happiness, my pain In my boyhood, I knew slowly She was my companion, my morning breakfast, bearer of my school bag, my playmate on the green lawn and my first shower of vernal rain In my manhood I came to feel She is my mom,
she is the happiest person on the earth to see me grow up as the best of humanity She taught me lessons of life and all my bounden duty to family and society Now she depends on me as a creeper on the tree, in my busy hours now she has a lot to say Now I am a family man Sorry, I cannot give her now, more time and sometimes I even forget to wish her © Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee An International Tagore Awardee 2024 winner, Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee, Ph.D ., known as Oleander Poet of India , is an Affilate Faculty of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond Virginia, formerly Associate Professor & Chair Post Graduate Deot of English Dum Dum Motijheel College is at present, Founder/President of Kolkata Indian American Society ( KIAS ). President of Kaleidoscope Indian American Society, besides being Executive member International Advisory Board of Theodore Drieser Society, Philadelphia. He is a multilingual poet/writer/columnist in various national dailies. He is a Trilingual Columnist, with praise, Poet. He is the Founder Member in the International advisory Board Theodore Dreiser Society, Philadelphia. Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee is a Trilingual Columnist in national English, Bengali and Assamese Dailies & winner of many educational excellence awards. He is also Author of 'Six Feet Distance: Looking Back to Lockdown' (AuthorHouse, Bloomington USA), 'Francis Scott Fitzgerald: His Art and Vision' (Patridge Singapore), 'The Ballad of the Bleeding Bubbles: Melodies and Maladies of Love' (Cyberwit Allahabad), 'Oleander Blooms: A Bouquet of Oleander Poems of Love' (Authors Press, New Delhi), 'Theodore Dreiser Going Beyond Naturalism' (INSC), 'Renee Rudhagnee' (Authors Press), 'Our Daughter, Our Princess' (Authors Press, New Delhi). He has been twice invited to Fairleigh Dickinson University (USA) as International Visiting Faculty and chaired many International Conferences, given public talk, took classes and participated in all events during his stay, there. He has edited Journals 'Literary Confluence' and 'Voice of Indian English Writers'. He pioneered some ideas of Fourth World Literature in India and worked as Resource Person in a number of International Conferences on Gender Studies, Post Colonial and American Literature in his country and abroad, and was felicitated by Hon'ble CM, Mr. Chandra Babu Naidu, as muli-lingual poet. He has to his credit, more than 2,000 articles in print and in online media. His collected works 'Vol I' (Partridge) and 'Our Time Revisited: A Collection of Essays on Man, Literature and Society' (Partridge), 'My American Days' are in press, to be published in 2024. You may read more about the Ratan Bhattacharjee at LinkedIn