Fernweh

 

All round me is autumn, but over there it’s spring.

The lure of a distant season’s strong. Everything

here’s gold, but it’s a withered gold – the end is near,

there it’s newly green, different world and hemisphere.

I’ve dived into that world,  and I’ve been forced up too

and home wasn’t home anymore, all strange and new –

it morphed to a restlessness, a vague sharp ache

for distant worlds once touched, and those I’d hoped to make.

Not that they’re not splendored, the withered, the yellowed,

but there’s a yen to be again on unknown roads

to drink once more from some strange stream, to face crosswinds

never felt, to plumb worlds never quite imagined.

Not that these are not enough – they are. They are.

But there’s a lure to green and gold that’s somewhere far.

If you google the title -  the straight translation is wanderlust, but I like a different one that explains it as 'farsickness' or 'farsoreness.' Way more on point. I'm quite often farsick. A friend posts pictures of fall colours in the higher latitudes and presto! - farsick. Another puts up ones of flamboyants blooming in the southern hemisphere - farsick.   Yet another shares travel pictures from Africa - you get the idea. 

I'm a constant tug of war between wanting nothing more than to be curled up on the couch at home and to escape it and get thousands of miles away this instant. Armchair travel is one way of indulging the farsoreness. Poetry is one too. There are a thousand virtual ways to escape. 

However, I'm pleased to report that I'm off the hills in a couple days for a much needed break. Most unvirtual, though in the same hemisphere and season. Back next week. Till then keep well and happy. See you soon.

Cocoons of Stone

 

'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.