Good Days

 

Tiger Hill, Darjeeling. 

On good days I notice the smaller things -

how the light strikes the litter, crumpled foil

bravely tries to give back. Butterfly wings.

On bad days - there are headlines on the boil.

On good days - the birdsongs. And their echoes.

How long they take to reverberate, to fade.

How the bracken on the mountain slope grows.

On bad days - the leaders and their tirades.

The waterfalls, the orchids, the lone skink.

The squirrel come to scope the balcony

as everywhere their normal habitats shrink.

The clouds offering handkerchiefs to me.

Most are good. Sometimes it's hard to discern

the exact point they end and where they turn.

The main purpose of going to Darj this time was to  get a clear view of the Kanchenjunga, which as you can tell from the image, was fully achieved.  We had several absolutely clear days, not a speck of rain anywhere, magical sunrises and sunsets, clicked everything I possibly could, so all in all - fabulous.  Much changes, and yet much remains the same. The mountains feel timeless though we know they too erode.  We went back to the old haunts - Glenary's, Penang, St Paul's School, hubby being an Old Paulite. He showed us the spots where the best views (and food!) could be had. It helps to have an insider in the team. 

I had planned to get a little introspective for this post, rounding up the year etc, but there are still three weeks left.  So still some way to go. In case you're taking time off from blogland  over the rest of the month -  season's greetings  to you and yours. Wish you the very best for the holidays and the New Year 2025. 

Up and down NH 31A

I saw nothing much of the peaks -

the monsoon weeks
are not the best viewing time.
But the climb
showed me a few other things:
hope, misgivings
happen at every altitude
whatever’s viewed.

 

Sometimes it takes the mountain mists,

covered summits,
obscure skies and clouds heaped up
to clear the nub;
sometimes a diffuse, dimmer light
shows up the heights
so much sharper; clearer than
clear sunlight can.






Back at my own breaking-down-every-minute workstation, (or maybe I should call it an idlestation?) after a two month break in India. Happy with the holidays, happy to be back.

Narrow roads open to broader horizons

Much broader my loving because of this love,

much wider my world because I travelled this lane -
narrow and steep from the valley on rough,
loosely scattered scree, the tarmac quite worn off;
an interrupted trickle of gravel and mud
sliding slowly down from the hills to the plain.

Not just the horizons that change in travel

and here the hills clipped them, whipped them into piles
somewhere foreshortened, elsewhere invisible
and yet they broadened, on narrow paths and tunnels,
on stilts of bridges that looked like they’d fall
but stood still, when I glanced back, with skeleton smiles.



Narrow roads open to broader horizons
and clear the view of the mists and the rains;
and one slender bamboo grove, some fronds of fern
droop over the road, secret arches of caverns
and a stripped knuckle of stone imperiously summon
some shift of pulses in the extremes of veins.

Drizzle

Way out, beyond every city limit

far in the hills, peace drizzles through the leaves
just ahead on the ribbon of the road
and no-one seems to catch up with it;
the sodden pathways gleam, a sudden mist
in luminescent white washes the spun weaves
of a delicate truth, heavily bedewed
with the rain, trembling and restless.