I See You

I see you walking on the cobbled path
walking to and fro
between a condo-home and school
in a bustling, busy, indifferent city;
your dad walking beside you,
his rain-soaked shirt clinging to his body,
and you walking dry in the rain,
a tent-like umbrella shielding you.
your dad has no venture-capital yet
to work on this project of his life.
But, and yet, all that he owned
he gave it to you.

 Image credit:
冯晨 

家或许无法给你最好的，但他给的都是他所拥有的。

A NOTE TO SELF

Dec 9, 2015

A NOTE TO SELF
Tree, a mighty tree,
your roots, the strength tightened within,
your sutured ties with the womb, the earth that bears,
are bared open;
the earthling, a foundling,
one with the earth and the sky.
You sway upon the hills and send your wings to the valley;
you sing in the valley and send
your songs to the sky and the hills;
you, the nourishment,
you the carrier of seeds and the life
of all that needs a sap,
scatter your seeds to the wind and let them go the way
they came,
somewhere from the place you did not know,
and rested in your heart to sleep and wake
and when the rains came,
woke up to find the springs that stirred.
You are the silent, steady learner
who would preserve and give,
scatter a wealth enshrined in the bowels o earth,
and encrypt the secret in every groove and the grain of your body.

THE SHADOW OF THE DOOR HANDLE....

The shadow of the door handle above the lock
And I stand and wonder if I should knock.
The shadow terrifies
.
It's like a hand perpetually locked in an embrace of a memory that would not let go.

The traces of the years spent in the yard
come back in that isolated shadow,
bringing the sunshine into a sad expanse
of the days spent away from this door.

I stand and watch endlessly
until I hear a voice behind my back,
"Knock! It's not too late to make it.
This was where you learnt to walk."


And then we walked in , hand in hand
feeling the dampness and the warmth,
all in one breath that was a suffocating effusion
of scents and smells, feels of worn out utensils and the stumbling and knocking
against the legs of tables and the chairs in the dark.

"This was where you broke my doll,"

"And this was where you knocked me down
as I reached for your marbles hidden in the sock."

"But that was all a long time ago"

"Hmm.. I have not forgotten how you cried and hated me;
hated me for what I was!"

"Yes, a monster who destroyed my childish delight!"

"And how your vendetta plagued me in my life to come!
You a sulking girl who grew up to hate
all that I tried to build in recompense!
And now I fear to ask you if you have changed"

The dampness of walls was seeping in
to wrap our past and the lost strands
that had tied two cousins in a shared home and a shared past.
The warped memories of the bygone past,
remote and yet too close
as if it happened yesterday.

The wicked smile of the imp in those eyes
and I a stupid , gullible angel of academies of useless learning,
carrying my burden of  vanity on sagging shoulders
and years stretched into an expanse of delusions and vapid dreams!

I was squirming under his cold scrutiny,
not sure if what stared at me was love
or resentment over my lack of sensibility.

We stood over the abyss that stretched
over the years of distance and derelict wanderings.
Was he still there where we left each other
on our different ways, long back when our journeys began .

His visage now showed signs of sorrow
and mine perhaps showed remorse
for the wounds we inflicted in the childish rage,
the imagined insults and contempt
as we endlessly practised our lessons of sadistic delight
in whacking each other's pride in vengeance
for the hurts we could never  forgive.

It was all there between us still
like a debt of the past that made us
what we were,
creatures bound in a family tie
that defined our identities
in the ways we never suspected to last
so long into our separate futures
 remote and torn.
Torn from my roots I was,
as I stood facing my opposite image
in a home so unreal and dark.

Heaven's Tapestry

For ages i haven't picked up a brush,
nor held the palette in my hand.
Now I just spend hours watching
the colors of the sky, the sea and the rains.
I read their language, store the images.
It's the archetypal language of memory.
A lake deep in the shadows,
the haven of geese,
is an exquisite blending of green and blue
where the grey is subdued
as if in delight.
Yellow is the colour of sunshine summer,
a blending of blue and yellow,
with just a dot of red to relieve monotony and the tyranny of green.
Moonlit nights are the marvels of purple and mauve,
hiding in mystical absence
the presence of the departing red and blue.
Colours have sounds and sounds colours,
an intermingling of senses for human birth.
Shadows breathe and vibrate colours,
ripples a rhythm, and the opaque sand will hum in the dark.
Wings have a tremor when they flap, a nervousness not known to bees.
We are born with a rich ancestry,
eternity glancing at each of its shadows.
And through each shadow emerges
a tapestry, a tapestry of heaven,
each sunset, moonrise and the ripple in a shadow, hides an intimacy of a deep surprise
of finding it all in the tapestry: a stitch, a hemming, a weave and a fold, all in place and a place for all.
,

SUNNY DAYS O AUGUST

On sunny days of August
I see my cat, my mysterious gift God sent to me,
basking in the sun,
on the compound wall.
A frail little shivering speck of life she was when she came,
left in the dangerous floods to survive on her own,
retrieved by my son and sitting on the palm of his hand
like a little flower-bud she came and when put down on the floor
ran straight to me and hid her tiny head in my lap.
And from then on, she knew none of her own clan,
and everybody wondered if she knew
that she was not a human at all.


Thank you +tanya dimitrova for declaring that you posted this pic for me. I was touched to see how well we know each other

Tanya Dimitrova originally shared:

A REALLY SHORT STORY

A Really, Really Short Story

Like a tree in love with death
she arose from the thicket
and called
for the clear blue sky and waited
for the thunder to strike at her roots and the crest.
The sky smiled
a clear blue smile of sagacity.
A little white dot of a moon
was biding his time
and looking down in anxiety.
Neither the sky nor the moon
knew the whereabouts of the lightning that kills.
And so long as the sky held aloft
the waning and waxing moon
the tree was going live, not die
at the hands of the capricious storm.

Sushama Karnik(c)

The old-town market-place! I love its smells,
 its colours. I love to feel its dust
in my nostrils and its noise
in the innermost pores of my heart.
Soon the streets will be deserted, the noises cease one by one,
the bargains stop, the buyers and sellers
will collect their belongings and start for home.
The market-place will be emptied of its contents
like a vessel from which water has leaked out.
A silence, like that which follows after a vibrating chord is stilled,
will pervade everywhere.
When an intensely animated and vibrant instrument is silenced,
the listener is plunged into a gloom
which penetrates deep.
It is in such moments of silence
that I would often re-enact the mysteries
 that would not open up.
I wander through the streets of the deserted market-place,
 its intricate mazes, the narrow lanes and alleys,
 where none knows me.
I sit under a tree, pull a shawl around my shoulders,
and a hood to cover my head.
Hardly recognizable now, I sit there, watching the flux of life.
The houses all around, are quietly huddled
 like solid masses of rocks carved from inside,
revealing their interiors filled with quivering light,
and I am in all of them now.

The Trees

The Trees
And then came the night when the sounds ceased.
The trees still, quivering, listening, sad;
the trees gentle, listening,far;
the trees swaying just a little, hardly seen, hardly felt,
their presence, a distilled drop of dew.
The night quailed, touched the tree and fell into peace
without longing.
Denuded of knowledge and strife,
the trees swayed,
and the leaves in a gentle surprise
called upon the wind
to break open the code
of the silence between the tree and the night.