At first, there was light
And the Garden of Eden;
God came down the light.
Eden Haiku
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Tag Archives: Poetry
Winter Transience
Latticed flakes, feather light,
Floated like eider down
And lightly lingered
Upon eyelashes aflutter,
Cheeks aglow and nosetips in freeze.
Amid the snowy florets
In the winter hush,
My footfalls muffled
In the downy pavement.
I walked with upturned face
Where crystalline blooms,
In whispering touches,
Winked and vanished.
In candy sugar ice,
The twigs and branches
Gleamed in fairy luster
In the charmed wood
Where the pathway crossed.
Winter’s brittle splendor,
In ethereal sheen,
Wafted me to enchantment
Aloft myriad graces
Into intimate magic, and,
Alas, a world of transience.
Summer Girls
Summer slipped in
Taking stealthy steps
Lagging behind nippy May
Which cool-caressed cheeks.
The sun began to linger
Making days longer
And humid air
Pearl-beaded foreheads.
The light-washed scenes
Brought warm-colored thoughts!
What a joy it was
To watch summer girls
Waltzing in
To parks and picnics
In their floral-print dresses,
Wafting their flutter sleeves,
And dripping sunlight in their smiles.
The ubiquitous bird-watchers
Stood by gleefully,
Sighing in deep satisfaction
While the elderly reminisced
About the bygone summers
Of spent youths.
My Stout Heart
Oh, my heart
Was so fragile
And brittle like crystal.
So easily broken
By an unkind word
Or cruel gesture
That could scratch
Or even crack!
I hid them.
And wore Teflon
For the world to see
An unscathed mien.
But deep within my tender heart
I felt the wounds.
Yet, covered they were
From probing eyes
Concealing all the hurts
Showing to all the world
An unbroken facade.
Time, in its inimical fashion,
Passed unhindered,
Not seeking palliatives.
The heart lived-
Albeit stitched and patched-
Unlike the crystal
Surviving as a whole
Surviving sturdily
The buffets of time,
The thorns of relations
And the cruel ills of society,
Declaring to the world,
“I have lived
And have grown stout”.
After Freeze
Cold bit my fingers
In the flurry
As I scraped ice
From windshield
And windows.
I blew hot breath
Into frozen fingers.
But it was pain
That pricked through tips
As blood defrosted
And began to flow
As feelings came alive
Bringing back memories
Of excruciating life
As blood awakened
And channelled through limbs.
Dragonfly
The summer was balmy
And the air hung like Indian muslin.
A somnolent lethargy overtook me
As I lay in my hammock
By the pond, hidden among weeds,
Whose surface shone speckled
By water’s sheen breaking through pondscum.
A sudden stir in the air above pond,
A glimmer of irridiscent colors!
A dragonfly was flitting upon the pond,
Transparent wings flashing colors
From metallic patches-
Red, brown, yellow, blue .
Helicoptering above, it lit
Upon a lily pad, compound eyes swirling
Its encircling globular vision searching,
A predator seeking prey.
But Fate decrees its tragic moments.
The unwary dragonfly foolishly forgot
The predator in the shallows.
A sudden splash and whiplike motion!
A bullfrog leapt up mouth opening,
Flicking its long and sticky tongue out,
And captured the hapless dragonfly.
Thus marked the end
Of a predator by a predator.
A Promise
We held hands and promised
To grow old together,
To laugh at our follies,
And to cry at our mistakes.
It was the promise of a dream
To wait together for the sunset,
A dream that was shattered
When one hand had to let go.
Childhood Revisited
All those simple memories
Of our childhood
Still walk hand-in-hand
To wake up
At chance encounters.
Little feet, little legs-
That’s what we had
In those elementary years
When we walked back
To our separate homes.
Spread across the street,
We walked abreast
In those days
Of scant traffic.
Those were innocent days
Of no warped thought
And only straight talks
In the purity of childhood.
Decades later, I met
One of these walkers!
It was an unexpected
And arresting moment!
Eyes brimming
With joyful tears,
Hand over hand
In a warm clasp,
We sharied those bygone days
In an affecting moment.
Words had no place ,
But our glances spoke
Of what we knew
Was pure without deceit
In that incandescent,
But innocent moment !
Waiting
So much time
Has tiptoed away
After the last breath
Slowly forsook you.
Grass covers your grave,
Ice frosts it,
Rain soaks it,
Dew moistens it,
Sun burns it
And wind sweeps it.
Yet you slumber away
In eternal rest.
The leaves have yellowed
And the fallen leaves
Deck the grass
On which I kneel,
Waiting patiently
To join my time with yours.
The Kid Behind the Tree
Who is the kid behind the tree?
Is he hiding from the world,
Away from the taunts and insults,
To shield from barbs and thorns–
Like the child in the bubble–
Free from contaminants
That hurt the smooth existence
Of a sweet childhood?
Is he hiding from the world
Because the world overwhelms him,
Expecting too much
From his little self,
To think like an adult,
Always to be good,
Not to be an idiot,
To be the wisest of all,
To be the smartest of all,
And never to make mistakes?
Where is his carefree childhood
Full of sweet and guileless memories?
RosyView 