Jayshree Misra Tripathi’s slim volume of poems Uncertain Times (released in the Kindle version now) published by Pepperscript Publishers, is the answer of calmness to disquiet. Some attempt to write poetry of disquiet which lead to despair, some say it with poems which build on the disconcerting experience but do not end in an unsettling way. After the turbulence, there may not be redemption but stillness leads a calm, the calm of putting things together and getting ready for life beyond the upheaval. This book is one of the latter.Organised under the rubric of six major themes – Towards Midnight, Disquiet in Isolation, #Lockdown, Environmental Follies and Nostalgia – the book covers the uncertainties of a cyclone to COVID, premature departures of loved ones to trepidation of a daughter coming late to a son working in fragile countries; all those sufferings which touch the reader.Tripathi has been a freelance journalist, poet and chronicler in the midst of a lifetime living as a peripatetic diplomatic spouse. She has taught and examined English language and literature for the diploma of the International Baccalaureate Organisation. Since 2013, she has written for websites including Huffington Post, News18 blogs and the Sahitya Akademi. A stoic response to uncertainty is not unusual for a person of such provenance.Human beings eventually can handle lot more than they think they can. We never stand on solid ground ever, never really or perhaps we never can. Uncertain times like the COVID-19 lockdown, pestilence and anxiety is a test for everyone. How we live in this dark enlightens us. When time has “lost its beat”, the “connotation has metamorphosed” in the calm, in the poet’s mind.Uncertain Times is written in the ‘clouds of the poet’s mind even though in sunny and starry nights’. It may not be luminous, but leads one to a calm eventually. By living the journey of life fully and gratefully, she lends a calmness to the disquiet. The haunting quality of disquiet is brought out too clearly in:“The past cannot be undone,The present so wastedThe future, yet to be born”.But the coping mechanism is honest, dignified and re-enchanting. Finally, all of us will have to get on with our lives. Despair or resignation is not an option. Human beings will have to stand up with courage to face squarely the enveloping uncertainty.A lockdown regime may ‘cast everything asunder’ but as a parent, she poignantly asks.“How may we/Overcome and release/The cancer of our painAs we age and depart?”The poems, with their deep turbulence, are refreshingly life affirming. Acceptance can be found even in the dark, even though we do not known how to turn on the light or do not have the ability to face the blast of light. Meanwhile, we can live on embracing uncertainty in the calm.The delicious ambiguity of calm emerges from the irony of life which is so unmistakably human. “Let the child beguile me/my heart forever” (The Outsiders’ Cherub). Once again, songs of the 1970’s provide the background:“Your lips seemed like winterAs my heart pounded soI bade you safe journey.”The restraint, detachment and inevitability of living are combined together to give often an epic depth to an intensely private loss. The poet has not deciphered all tragedies but there is no resignation nor a craving for redemption. She has learnt to trust the journey with calm. She learns to live the questions, hoping to live among some distant day into the answers.Finally, it is human nature to choose between certainty and curiosity, armour and vulnerability. But it is a poet’s unique destiny that choosing to be curious makes her choose to be vulnerable in the same breath. She recognises the “unity of the fate of landless labourers”. But finally “home just drifts away.” Even if vulnerability is palpable in life, events or diminishing hope, visceral reality will have to touch it:“Keep those two fifty-year old mango trees,From crashing into my home.”There is no giving up. Finally, a poet can’t give up. How she expands her life and experience it with enchantment or lack of it is the litmus test;“Breathe deeplyInhale, exhale –Angst is another word.”There is also a quiet hope in the end. In the poem ‘Lockdown Hopes’, there a pulsating positivity despite people being ‘lost in timeless space’.“When our thoughts are kinderOur actions nobleWe will heal, we will heal.”This is a book of poems for everyone who wants to find something life-sustaining in the dark and disquiet. There is a Louise Gluck like fluidity with restraint for learning to live in uncertain time and still stay calm and alive. Even if one is not exactly where one used to be, nor at a place where one wanted to be, it is a lesson of attempting to live fully and gratefully in that part of journey that is yet to be traversed. This bouquet of poems is a life boat of calm within the turbulence, a ladder to climb to the top of human spirit and heart. They are touching poems of depth, which create serenity rather than seriousness.This book of poems will help others to walk forward with courage (much like the poet’s project #HelpHerWalkForward) apart from significantly adding to her body of work consisting of two volumes of poetry, a book of short stories and a book on the folk tales of Odisha.Satya Mohanty is former Secretary to the Government of India. The views expressed in this article are personal.