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| 'Rivers know this : There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.' ~ Winnie the Pooh. |
Sometimes
it needs a little bit more,
sometimes
a little less.
All
life sustaining grains are grasses,
I’m
told – so’s mortal flesh,
and
I’m told love’s like the breeze in trees
never
seen, only felt,
a
shaken bud and some falling leaves
try
hard but cannot help.
I’ll
go with you to the bamboo grove
alight
with fireflies
and
to ancient riverbanks raked up
their
gold and silver prized,
some
boat cruising the narrow stream
will
call for us to come -
we’ll
signal back panicked that we know
neither
to sink nor swim.
I’ve
read in books with that paper smell
that
love’s a fever dream,
it
burns and cools and boils up again -
no
one knows what it means,
and
most times what we think are stars
are
just bugs with backs aglow,
and
for a hundred crowns of thorns
there’s
just one reluctant rose.
I’ll
come with you to the desert sands
pleated
even by the wind.
The
wind that’s a metaphor for love
on
some eternal brink,
there’ll
be no birdcalls at sunset
only
the slinking fox,
the
viper fangs, the scorpion nests,
no
human calling the shots.
The
rainsong’s loud and the desert’s wide
and
the sands consume the drops,
the
earth gives back as per its whims
a
field of flowers or nought
and
everyday the sun segues
a
degree north or south,
a
puppet moon tugs at the tides
hidden
behind the clouds
I’ll
come with you to medieval forts
like
cocoons spun in stone,
walk
beside you on paths laid prior
in
some forgotten aeon,
and
every step we take on the grass,
winds
keening into storms,
each
blade a sign of mortality -
our
arms make no final home.
I’m
told star constellations have formed
some
sort of secret code,
those
who know how to decipher them
know
the miracles wrought,
and
though grass dies the secret lies
in
its always cycling back
as
we too of the mortal flesh.
No
need for panic attacks.
Sometimes
it needs a couple of words
and
sometimes a fortress
to
understand how the grass withers
to
equal dust of flesh,
sometimes
it needs a stanza or eight
to
figure the meanings here
and
sometimes it needs nothing at all
the
silence’s loud and clear.
A long time ago, the offspring was a child then, his age in single digits, during a different autumn delirious with hope, he had asked - is he the President of the World? - the capitals very evident in the question. Indeed, my son. I had tried to explain why it seemed that way with the TV coverage, especially in the Middle East, because millions of lives are impacted by who gets voted in there even though the rest of the world has no say in it.
Elections leave me feeling somewhat battered, in my country and in the most powerful nation. I have extended family settled in the USA for decades, some of them are feeling on top of the world right now, some others are devastated. It was the same here in India a few months ago. Endless gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts, houha unlimited, analysis of this percentage and that share and why? why? why? and how are we ever going to survive?
My own two cents - Rome wasn't built in a day, therefore it is unlikely to be destroyed in a day too. What's been put together over two and a half millennia/centuries can't be annihilated in four or fourteen or even forty years. Calm down, people. Whoever gets voted in will leave too, sooner or later, and someone else will take his place. No matter how far the pendulum swings out to the left or right, when it stops, it stops in the middle. We'll get the future we all deserve, equality, liberty, justice and peace, whichever route it takes to get there. Equilibrium is a law of nature.
On a completely different note, this here is the 1001th verse entry on this page. And the October post for WEP was the 50th flash I've posted. That feels like a milestone or something, which I have to admit I'm bad at noticing, but better late than never. Or I can say, there need be no hurry here either. Mini celebration is duly being observed, if with a time lag.
Have a peaceful and happy week, hope you have lots to celebrate at your end.
