Latticed flakes, feather-light,
Floated down-eiderlike-
Amid the snowy florets.
In the winter hush,
Footfalls muffled
In the downy pavement;
On upturned faces
Crystal blooms,
In whispering touches,
Winked and vanished.
Twigs and branches
Gleamed in fairy luster,
In candy-sugar ice.
In the charmed wood
That lined the walks.
Winter’s brittle splendor,
In ethereal sheen,
Wafted into enchantment
And, alas, into transience.

I did not choose it, but it chose me!

The line is drawn and

Death parts the mates-

A lonely road awaits  the remaining.

Grief blurs and blinds,

And destination is unclear.

Where does one go?

The grieving melody of the bereft crane

While her mate writhed and stilled

From the hunter’s arrow,

In emotive lays of oft-repeated lyrics,

Translated the Valmiki epic,

The Ramayanam of love and separation.

But, the crane, in grief,

Left to tread the lonely path

Never to be noted.

Suddenly, the music stopped

And my life went silent.

The one departed from my hearth,

My heart, and my life.

The breath cooled, fingers numbed,

And the light extinguished

In those tawny eyes

That sparkled with humor

And darkened in anger.

The recliner with marked fading

Is vacant, the forever busy reader

Absent from the cushions,

The constant drum of the brain

Forever silenced

By a careless medical world.

The world kept going

Without a pause,

The snow kept falling,

The sun kept shining,

And the days progressed.

The clock ticked on…

But, the music had stopped.

Once there was a just man, a righteous man

Whose life touched many and more.

Honor and dignity wreathed his brows

And duty beckoned him in every style.

He did not shirk, he did not buckle;

Steadfast he was in all life’s callings.

From his core to the corridors

Resounded his watchword, ‘ethics’.

Diminutive though he was,

Here was a giant of a man

Whose shoulders bore the bulk

Of all his profession

With surefooted ease and rectitude.

Now that he has passed

Into the pages of memory,

His sons, his daughter, and the wife of his life

Yearn for his presence and long for his love,

A love that nourished their lives before

And a love that will bless their futures.

High up in the boughs it clung against the winds,

Among the leafless branches that splayed out

Reaching into emptiness, bony fingers stretched

Out into the winter void.

    Desolate in the brumal air, the nest in lonely gloom

    Hung to the parted fork, its twigs in disarray;

   Amidst the cracked eggshells and the strewn down lining,

   The nest was mute in its air of abandon up the branches.

High up in the boughs, the nest clung against the winds,
Among the leafless branches that splayed out reaching into emptiness,
Bony fingers stretching out into the winter void.

Desolate in the brumal air, the nest clung, in lonely sorrow,
To the parting in the fork; its twigs in disarray in the air of abandon;
Amidst cracked eggshells and strewn down lining,
The nest was mute, up in the shaking boughs.

Rheumy eyes peered out through scanty lashes,
From behind parted curtains, at the dreary nest
And blinked the eyes at the unshed tear
Gathered in the ducts that dried up so long ago
In the forlorn days, in the wake of partings
When the last vacant room began to reek of unuse and must.

Breath rattled the bony cage when the watcher sighed in gloom
At the void and emptiness left behind in mottled remnants
Of loves lost and lives departed- dusky shadows in the waning glow
Of fading embers and afternoon sun in the empty room behind!

Everything should always count,
Even jealous years trying
Through memories of promise.

Some thoughts have consequences-
My fate’s pawns play
Upon plots against passions
And pause to sustain dreams.

But, we are the stuff of dreams
And, in our wispy existence,
Words cut deeply like rapiers, and
Neglect surrounds with suffocation-
Pretense wins the day!

Every hurt is cherished, preserved,
And revived with each pained breath,
Oppressingly cheered to know
That I have weathered that too.

Then, hand in hand, we turn
Towards the lowering sun,
Aging towards the sunset!