The arrow of nostalgia
piercing through lost years,
Moving swiftly through cloudy past,
To hit home with precision,
To land at a moment,
A little dot in space-time fabric
containing a tiny slice of life
when we talked, held hands,
When just being together
was to feel full, rested, contended.
You left and I stayed
in the lovely orchard we’d built,
The garden, flowers, fruits, leaves,
where the soul now grieves,
Memories scattered around like
an autumnal drizzle of leaves,
And me like a gardener
hoeing, pruning, spading,
Working to bloom spring flowers in autumn,
Trying to undo the fall,--
the autumn that permanently
descended and sat upon the orchard,
Coloring it with yellow-brown colors of fall,--
Forever,
Toils where the gardener of springs
in an autumn-possessed orchard.
Why be ashamed and apologetic
about what you are?
Why try to be a fraction of your full self
to fit in the mold of others?
To gather fake sense of security,
it needs lots of explanation and effort,
By being a fraction of yourself,
you are like a fragile leaf on the ground,
lying there to be broken under others’ boots,
But by being your full self,
you become a green leaf on a high branch,
soaking sunrays,
kissing the dew,
and swaying to the free breeze.
I’d come closer by an inch
and you’d step back by a mile,
An inch of reclaim
paid with a mile of declaim,
More inches breeding more miles,
You vanishing towards the horizon,
Then gone,
Then your memories would recede
in the same proportion and manner,
That’s how time and space grow,
That’s how this cosmos expands,--
at my cost.
A mysterious longing
smolders through the day
and burns at night,
An exciting anticipation,
An unsparing desire,
The pores of your skin
humming with excitement.
A feeling of remarkable audacity,
which makes you unbothered about the
usual jostle and hustle of life,
Something looks straight into your eyes,
And you flinch, get tamed and surrender
to a gleaming, flashy star.
Your identity gets focused
in the chaos and hubbub of life,
You stand apart,
It even makes you feel proud,
even haughty,
to own this exclusive excitement,
You slyly smile,
A warmth spreads through you,
Melts the clods of uneasiness,
Overpowers your molecules of ego.
You flow,
You enter a spring,
A celebration begins,
Almost a rebirth and renewal,
You kiss the new sprouts,
You appreciate the flowers,
You feel the breeze on your skin,
Your eyes see the beauty around,
Your soul feels the all-pervading love
when your heart gets a sweet shove
at the mere look of your dearest dove.
We are basically
a very lonely species,
Loneliness pervades our being,
Maybe we love being lonely,
And to keep its bitter-sweet charm,
we allow interruption to our loneliness
through love, affection, friendship, relationships,
But we know we have to
get back to be lonely again,
We are ready to pay the costs for it,
We squander away love and friendships
to buy our next installment of loneliness.
Mostly, we are viewing ourselves
in terms of what we are not
and what we couldn’t become,
In this way,
we are simply repulsing life,
We deny our very own little reality,
our existence,
our life,
our twinkling little puddle
under the starlight,
We ignore the wild flowers
that offer consolation
if we had given them a little bit
more than a cursory look.
