The most daunting was

The surprise, the shock of it,

When flakes hurried down

In a pelter of madness,

After the glimpse of warmth

When the sun coursed, already,

Into the House of Ram!

Floating and wafting,

In a swirl of tossed down

Like those from an epic battle

Of enormous pillows thwacking

In a pajama game of giants,

The snow flakes swayed

In a danse macabre ,

In a relentless fury

Of mad moves and insane steps

Of a whirling dervish

Of far away climes.

Suddenly, the quiet settled

Like a pall over the land

And the flurries gentled

To a slow stop

That ended the rage.

A white moth or a black crow,

East or West,

The woman goes about

In a world without brightness,

No rainbow hues to lighten

The life made barren by death,

A crippled life with broken wings

And severed limbs.

Death detaches a pair!

The Indian widow,

Dashed her bangles

And muted them for ever;

In washed out, colorless white, and

The vermilion wiped off her forehead,

She entered as the bad omen

At births and weddings.

Draped in black crepe and veiled,

The Western widow fared no better.

A daughter, wife, a mother,

And often a grandmother,

She was somebody’s someone.

In stoic silence or in muted sighs,

She yearned for security

That had forsaken her.

The funeral meats turned cold

And the widow turned

To face a changed world.

In the East or in the West,

The widow, often, faced

A life of undefined terms

And defined abandonment.

But, for the widower,

There were no strictures,

White clothes or black clothes,

The ominous reminders

Of death’s parting

And the loss of love and life!

Is this an ember that glows in gashes?

The soot is lifted with each blow of breath

That touches the core of heat

To transform the gray lumps.

In life’s furnace, one stays cold and dull,

Never touched by outside drafts

Until the pain of loss and shock of grief

Wafts the dull coating away

And fires up heart’s core

And awakens the nerve ends.

And as bellows blow air into

The tranquil, insipid coal chunks,

The cold furnace comes alive.

Fired up, the coal gleams and shines

Into a fiery, hot, ruddy gem.

It is alive and pain lashes

In the glowing slashes.

Awakening powers

That rise from within.

A sun for the moment,

Coal gives out its life,

To those it nurtures,

Heat to sustain,

And warmth to enfold

Those who gather around.

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.