Mycroft enters
And there is sunshine.
Exuberant and Happy,
This child looks,
His eyes seeking knowledge.
His face wreathed
In joyous smile,
His hand reaches out
To touch my face
With eager fingers
And darting moves
To know me,
To love me.
Thus he enters
Into my life!
One cannot help
But love
This blithe spirit
Of radiance,
A being that brought
Light into my days
Of pandemic doldrums.
Spring has unhooked
The clasps of winter
After the friendly raindrops
Soaked the gelid ground.
The gold green of rebirth
Turned to the lushness of summer,
The succulent greens
Foreshadowing the plenitude
Of the coming harvest.
Aureate and rufous,
The leaves blazened the orchards
And the ripening gourds
Hung down the vines
While the nutshells
Filled with sweet kernels.
Life shifted with time
Marked by the cathedral chimes
And the harvest moon
Shed luminance
Upon the carpet
Of browns and grays
Of mud-soaked leaves
On the hardening soil
Going frigid
Under the winterfall .
Snow flurries descended,
Gentle as angel wings
Or as harsh as flying arrows
In icy winds.
Through window panes
As clear as crystal
Or clouded with water streaks
Filtering the sun,
I waited for reawakening,
For another cycle of life.
When did grey clouds appear
Suddenly to blot out my sunshine?
The leaden sky loomed
Above my light-filled thoughts
And my gladness wavered
To fill me with morbid thoughts.
Why did my moods change
When images crowd in
To misshape my feelings,
To color my emotions,
And to play hide-and-seek
Through the portals of my mind?
My window panes,
Often streaked with crystalline drops
Of yesterday’s rains,
Made me witness the changes
In the outside world
In perplex reactions.
And should I change too?
Why can’t my rainbows
Stay iridescent always
To make all my days
Sunny and bright?
Tears are not mere salty drops
Shed from bloodshot eyes.
They are squeezed out
From broken hearts
And lacerated lives.
Often unnoticed
And hidden from knowing eyes,
They go uncherished.
Yet, they are precious-
Priceless pearls pulsating
With every heart beat
Of living hearts.
They tell the tales
Of moments in life;
They tell the tales
Of excruciating poignancy.
I cannot ask;
I will not ask.
Denial mortified me!
I can only take
What is freely given.
I am not moss;
I am not vine.
I do not cling;
I do not burden.
I am just me!
There is no one to share my laughter;
There is no one to wipe my tears.
In the waning rays of the sun,
I see the twilight of my years;
Shadows of coconut leaves crisscross
In the fading light like a lattice of memories.
Summer gales have ended
The green tumult of my youth;
I sit in solitude,
As autumn glides in aureate breeze
WIth gentle touches around my face
Calming the bygone vagaries and upheavals
Into maturing reflections
Of clemency and purgation.
In these quieted moments,
The fragrance of dusk wafts in
The redolence of jasmine and nightqueen
Spiced with the pungent lantana.
I look far into the bamboo grove
Where slender trunks rise up to the sky,
Swaying in the breeze, bowing right and left.
I hear the suspiration and sussuration
Of grassy leaves conversing
And I hear the whisper of God
Granting benediction.
I became a person
I was not
When I said,”Yes”
At the altar.
In my twilight years,
In my solitude,
When I was
No more a green girl
In a world
Of social distancing
And self isolation,
I reverted back
To the undomesticated,
Totally oblivious me.
But years have added
Grains of wisdom
And I am, no more,
Totally clueless.
I have come to relish
Sweet memories
Of love and romance
Of yesteryears
And the filial
And sibling bonds
Crisscrossed
With maternal
And grandmaternal
Cares and doting.
Winter stays reluctant to leave
And spring waits in the shadows;
The frozen grass is stubbornly stiff
And the sleeping buds refuse to open.
Regrets stay buried
Frozen under the ice
Hesitant to be taken out
To thaw and to correct.
What right do I have
To bury my regrets
To start a new life,
Pristine and unblemished?
In the avenue of dreams,
I sauntered, weaving my way,
Giving desires color
With my secret thoughts.
Days and years passed
And patience had its limits;
Yet, I added frills and whistles,
Etching with my own fingers.
Heart kept yearning;
Dreams kept growing.
Landscape extended;
Dreamscape expanded.
Among shimmering stars,
Dreams fan out like rockets
To wink out, in the sky,
One by one, in an ephemeral show.
But we are the dreamers;
We do not forsake any,
But lasso in all of them
And see reality in our dreams!
Winter entered stealthily
When he left abruptly
And leached all colors
From my todays and tomorrows
Leaving a landscape
Of white and black
And shades of gray.
The road ahead lay
In undulating patterns
Of slate and pewter grays
Of frozen and melted ice,
Scattered in swathes
The white of snow.
White trunks of birches,
Speckled with black,
Crowded on both sides
In geometric precision
Of perpendiculars
Curving away,
In a perspective drawing
Of charcoal and pencil,
To converge into
A darkening tunnel,
Into the unknown tomorrows.
