Friday 29 August 2014

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?















Monday 25 August 2014

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.



Wednesday 20 August 2014

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.






Saturday 16 August 2014

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.






Monday 11 August 2014

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.





Monday 4 August 2014

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.








Friday 1 August 2014

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.