Content

But I am content to be homeless

so long as I have a road,

your step alongside is happiness

who cares about a fixed address

when the seas are blue and broad?

And I am content to stop somewhere -

an island’s fine to moor,

happiness is your breath in my hair

and a moonlit track, what do I care

for numbers on floors and doors?

Homecoming

The cars are sparse on the roads, duly recalled
from long past weekends; maybe it's just the roads -
marked in yellow and white, become smart and broad
with added swoops of new flyovers, malls new and old.

We retrace journeys, the same roads, the same gateways

but shut fast now, like the past, a shuttered, closed sea;

the off licence across morphed to more family

friendly stores.  Sure, there is no going away

but neither a return. The breeze stirs the dark in trees

as we walk on, the fingertips of our thoughts

just brushing against each other.  You may not

walk the same island twice, cross the same river valleys.



There is no homecoming, wherever you retrace
routes, return rivers, islands.  Home is not a place.

Write...Edit...Publish...August 2014 : Taking Chances

This post is being scheduled for Write...Edit...Publish  the monthly bloghop hosted by Denise Covey, where the prompt for August is "Taking Chances".   More details on the sidebar at top-left, please do join in and spread the word.


My entry is a short verse, poetry is easier to write than fiction in a time-crunch :) and poetry is also a constant and a comfort I hang onto during avalanches of change. I am bang in the middle of one, an avalanche I mean, we have just moved to a new place and settling down is taking forever. Keeping fingers crossed for a hassle-free transition. I will catch up with you all as soon as things are sorted.  Meanwhile, stay well and happy reading/writing!

All the chances I did not take

made poems running down my spine

and shadows walking over my grave,

my moons nudged out by the skyline;

the earth-warm routes that lost their tracks

got down and dirty in the fields,

hopped-on hopped-off without a map

in grasslands and rhymes that free-wheeled

into words and worlds as vast as wind

and love as ocean-blue as songs;

the forks of swallowtail yearnings

and dreamdrops fallen diamond-strong.

Read the other entries here.

Sunbeam smiles

I will turn away from prying eyes

and screaming lines, and find a place -

may be a path that we walked once

the steps to friendship from acquaintance

and mourn alone that lost slow rise

of sunbeam smiles, shone onto my face.

Who moved my quays?

I.

I forget.  I forget where I started out, who was with me.

Were you there? And you? It’s only now I have noticed

that I am walking alone.  Cobbled pathways in a different city.

Sea waves out in force on rocky shores shattering the dawn mist.

There is so much comfort and warmth in a group

Friends, strangers, the neat categories of acquaintance,

stifling heat of laughter.  Never the chill of holding aloof,

never walking alone with the dawn spray even once.

Every seashore, every path is precious, tender, dawn fresh

when I am alone. Hard footsteps ring on stone

clear and solitary amidst the muted, relentless rush

of wind or water. Undisturbed. Elements on their own.

I forget where I started out, but when I loop back again

I stand at that same spot with you, where the journey began.

II.

I’m not sure if I moved off, or you dropped one by one

like leaves do by the wayside and then are dribbled away

by careless feet, by the sweeping reckless walk of women -

the brush of hems and borders. Things that heave and sway.

I only noticed when the wind blew harder into my hair

when I was thrown to the silences, when the spray struck at my cheek.

As the cold crept up my exposed skin without this barrier -

the crush of bodies absorbed into the chatter of group-speak.

All this spray that stings my face, every wind that billows

into my hair and my clothes in needle sharp profusion

every press of step on stone, every road that goes

winding alone into blinded corners - none of them feels foreign.

I’m not sure who left whom, who wanted to stay or quit

But wherever I stop, I find your face at every point of transit.

Banyan and light

There was a banyan, half light half shade,

the sun on a twig - a surreal fruit,

a flock of crows on a raucous raid;

and restless lake waters in pursuit

of the far shore. Idyllic made

into a rapier-thin moment of truth:

each moment and each breath must fade.

Take that helmet off!

Come show me a different face, you know you can;

take off that helmet, close those cocked gun eyes,

collect and still in your lap those grenade hands

and wipe up that small smudge of blood and lies

from your lips, that dribble of hate, go on;

finally switch off that screen, delete that plan

just stop carrying someone else’s weapon,

rise and reach into yourself, you know you can.

Let the flashing blades of all your cruel words

rust to dust, all triggers jam, all arms fail;

there are many other things, far, far worse

than a loss of will for violence to prevail.

The planet is your country; you do not want

to create another random battlefront.