Someplace Else...

 

Seasons come on timid tiptoes over here –

a sudden spurt of green in a pavement crack,

a roof terrace splashed with bougainvillea,

your balcony hibiscus makes a comeback.

 

They’re all cultivated, but just imagine

distant places in some different hemisphere,

a different ocean and a tide rolling in,

far off plaintive birdsong nestled in your ear.

 

There the rain’s on open grounds and petrichor

weaves its heady perfume into the winds

silver rain drops into its own metaphor.

It’s not the season you’ve ever imagined.

 

There’s no timid green spurt, no paved surfaces,

just the earth, rains, you and the wildernesses.

Rather a lot of things are awry in my world right now,  well, not my world only, I'm not in favour of one individual hogging the world, but you know what I mean. It's been going on for sometime - the war sending the fuel prices into a spiral, routine misogyny and crimes against women, daylight robbery in high places under the patronage of political bigwigs, all kinds of mixed messages from officialdom and so on ad nauseam. 

I avoid the news like the plague but sometimes some trivial nonsense turns out to be the last straw :) Something like that happened last week,  I vented on FB  and a close friend advised me to look up and out at the nature all around - always restorative. 

Now I am physically at a place that reminds me of this song here, though I have to confess I've never seen a single lilac blooming in the wild, the flowers are all different but the emotions are universal. Anyway, I followed my friend's advice the best I could through poetry, the most excellent escape route out of a blue funk and a bridge between having and not having and magicking mood switches out of thin air. Phew! 

I hope your season is going well and you're at a place from which there's absolutely zero need to escape. 

With Billy on the balcony

 

This season we aren’t going anywhere

no Almora, nope, not even Darjeeling

and certainly no quaint cobbled foreign square.

There’s rain. Coffee. The hibiscus is blooming.

 

How pleasant it is to avoid all hill towns –

I have the poetry of Billy Collins.

No need to trudge, out of breath, up and down.

Home with coffee. And the sound of the rain falling.

 

No urge to charge in to ancient monasteries,

marvel round eyed at gold icons and things.

Here’s the flamboyant. And the frangipanis.

A rain soaked bedraggled bird that still sings.

 

And Billy points out that Bologna and Rome

aren’t a patch on rain and coffee at home.

Palace of Dreams

 

Didn’t you always crave a lemon tree,

a mango or two, the smell of summer?

A clematis trailing the exposed bricks?

Didn’t you always dream what this would be?

Less concrete and curtains and more runner

beans, citrus suns, hiraeth edging homesick.

The tides of jasmine covering for the sea.

Halfway to a sonnet, half a bit firmer

and freeing itself of every metric 

to lace into an amorphous canopy.

An empty sparrow’s nest in one corner.

A bare bulb somewhere, nothing idyllic.

Rain filling up the sky and rusting grills.

The paving dusted with hibiscus pistils.

July has run into August and I'm pedalling furiously to catch up somehow but always falling behind, always out of breath and vaguely puzzled as to why this is happening. The idea is to post the first and last Sundays/Mondays but I think the first one has slipped by without my realising it. Oh well, what's done is done, or rather what's left undone cannot be done retrospective, only done late. Anyway, better late than never.

August is always a busy month - lots of family and personal milestones, apart from the big national holiday coming up on the 15th. So offline life will muscle in and shove aside the online one - guaranteed. A few years ago this would have upset me, I'd have scheduled stuff and not missed a single Sunday...but one evolves - I no longer obsess about things I can't help, I don't know for sure if that's a good thing but it doesn't feel like a bad one. 'Do what you can with as much as you have and let the rest go' - I'm still internalising things I should have done years ago. Better late than never...

Wishing you a smooth and tranquil week ahead.

 

Vacancies 2017

The monsoon and I arrive, every year

about the same time, and the sky’s shampooed

with sudsy clouds, the asphalt’s rinsed in mud,       

all the way through the city up to here

awash with reflections, the tree leaves clear

of past dust, debris. But change’s accrued

in infinitesimal moves of blood;

in tiny degrees mapping atmosphere.

A house has fallen vacant on a street -

overgrown, greedy vines snap at its heels.

A locked cupboard somewhere, an empty chair,

a pair of old, worn slippers minus the feet.

The city commute’s the same, the same rain wheels

across the road, just that you aren’t there.