Month: July 2008

A river has no choice

If she has to flow,

She must accept two banks

How else can she flow,

Even the time needs the banks of past and the future

To flow in present

But there is one difference

You will not

Ask me again and again

If I need to flow still

I am the glow

Of a firefly, now on and now off

But then when it is dawn

I am not there,

Will you take care

Not to let silt settle too much

Like meaningless memories,

Drain them away,

Flow and go

To the shore yet unexplored,

Without a history to show

When you grow up

You will ask some time,

Why did I take so long

To come and dine

With you and watch your tantrums

And some unanswered jabs

At me, for not remembering

So many of your stories

At the moment you demanded

But no, I will not do that,

I will not come

My little boy

Lest the garden planted by your elders

Gets spoiled

I am standing here, on the other

Bank of time

Cross over whenever you want to partake

Some joys of nothingness, some

Fun out of the cup of irreverence

I had   never admitted

All the  lies I told

You, my son for so long

That it did not matter, what

You said, or did

It actually mattered a lot,

Always did. So deeply it did

That I now keep a diary of

All the days and nights

I hid

My tears from you

But not from your mother

Who still wonders why things

Small and big

Make me cry,

Just does not know, still

Why

when you took to walking on a path untreaded

i had not known

the trail will be so long

i tried and then abandoned,

it took me always away from wherever i wanted to go,

can paths turn on their own

differently for different travellers

it seems so

silences sprouted in my garden yesterday

i had not sown the seeds

but then i did nuture spaces

in which the seeds of silence could  grwo

now that they are here, i might as well

nourish them

who knows when there is long interlude

between  the rain spells

the flowers of forgetfulness on these plants

might spread their fragrance

and enable me to forget that

i was waiting for such a long time for

a sound that has now gone underground

do not ask me to slow down, o boatman, now

let me sink in the river

why are you asking me to stop

and return

lest i sink

when you were seeing me pleading with you

to give me a boat with a hole

i could then have sunk slowly,

now, let me go my way

in the middle of the stream

where she loses a concern

for any thing that does not follow her commands

the rain this time could not wash all the stains

that had stuck to the walls of my home

i scrubbed all of them

and hoped that lashes of rain

will do the rest

but it seems

these stains dont dissolve in water,

which is so pure

how do i tell the sky

to sprinkle acidic rain

on my house

so that my walls could be clean

may be i have to live with these stains

as a gift of time

when i did not belong here, or there

a knock on the door

a quivering  sound of bumblebee

a rush of a stream struggling with a stone,

too big to dissolve

unsure, whther it should give way

or just remain firm to endure

the splashes of the stream

unwilling to ensure

it stays there

and not letting stone decide

if it should  not really care!

do not bandon grind stone

why so many poems have been written today

there is no reason,

why should poems need a reason

why should one need to go through the grind

to understand the need for patience

after all learning without persistence is not possible

when has the grindstone complained

of all the grains it has powdered

some times very fine, some times coarse

i am getting old

and the grains remain coarse

will you abandon the grind stone just for that

ask yourself

when night will be no more

the clouds will cover the day no longer

light will be there

al around

and birds will take over the ground in my house

i will feed them but only some of them

some will not come

some will not chirp

the squirrels will explore and then leave all the crumbs

of stale bread

like my dreams, half eaten by moths

and remaining burried in the compost pits

for termites or earthworms to savour