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!

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!