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.
Into blackness I descend,
Seeking the lost “me”,
Lost to the negatives of my life-
The poking and pulling-
The constant barrage of blames-
“Ich”, “aham” – where are they?
Do I voice my wants?
Do I choose?
I cannot grasp a hand; I have no foothold.
Always there is emptiness when I seek
A helping hand, a listening ear-
Always the emptiness-
Fight, fight,
Fight the blackness.
Do not descend into the vortex,
Into dark pools of nothingness-
Fight, fight for glimpses of light,
For finding “me”.
I exist, I live,
I rise above the nothingness.
But, the fight takes its toll
And it takes longer and longer
To come back to myself.
The turmoils wait to devour
And send me to oblivion.
How long can I hold on to ‘me’?
“Have faith”,
The Eternal Dove whispered,
Not in tongues of flame,
Not in a gush of wind,
But, in gentle syllables
Of feather touches
That stroked
And caressed me
To hold me to me,
To stop the spiral
And to enter into light-
I am here!
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!
The sere fallen leaves
And the shattered broken fence
Witness waning life.
The rocks, dank and dark,
By ev’rgreens and year-end grass
Take forboding stance.
Like sheep in a meadow,
We are herded, mute ‘n servile,
In foggy terrain.
The scaly serpent writhes
Amid rough and tumbled rocks.
Lord God made them all!
I live upon thorns
To feed on bitter berries,
And yet, life goes on.
By the gnarled, bleached tree
And the weathered rocky crags,
The green of hope grows!
Dust of desperation shadows mornings;
Soulless hunger rattles weary bones;
Lonely dawn crosses lonelier darkness.
The summer waters tumbled down
In gleeful stream, full of life and joy.
Yet, shadows wait and entice
Into midnight’s snare of subsumed dreamscape
With dark morsels of primal prickings.
Moon changes patiently;
Time floats beyond worn thoughts-
The sane wait out for sun to happen!
RosyView 