I
seas churn
under darkened skies
raindrops arrive
pelting the sandy shore
with wind-blown violence
II
the rocky shore
becomes a fierce fountain
as wave water
hits and shoots skyward
to be blown sideways
III
this storm lingers
as metaphorical storms
are known to do
natural storms are
always in motion
I found the catacombs, below
my mind’s deepest basement level,
searching for secrets in shadows.
Up top, my tracks were writ in snow,
and wet prints through keeps, medieval,
’til I found the catacombs below.
What would I find down there, who knows?
Let’s hope not some home-grown devil.
Searching for secrets in the shadows
isn’t work for weak and weary souls.
Don’t know how I ‘massed the mettle
to find the catacombs, below.
I felt the torment and the throes
of one who’s become bedeviled,
searching for secrets in shadows.
I saw highs and lows — thorns and rose,
but never had time to revel.
I found the catacombs below,
searching out secrets in shadows.
There was an Orangutan from Malaysia
who dreamed of leaving Southeast Asia.
“Sure, I’d love to linger,
but it’s hard being ginger
when you live deep in the heart of Asia.”
Taken in Aihole on November 28, 2020.
Ancient Agonies
abound
Written boldly
on our
souls
Cold chiseled
into the architecture
of one’s mind,
a mind rife with
desire
for things that
it does not know.
Taken on November 28, 2020 at Mahakuteshwara Mandir.
A downy, white feather twists languidly, drifting downward.
I spot it as I stand on my balcony.
I’m transfixed,
compelled to follow the feather to its final resting place,
be it inside or outside the rail.
I’m transfixed because it moves impossibly slowly;
gravity’s hold on it is tenuous,
a puppy’s breath could put it on another course —
changing its fate.
And in those moments of lazy falling,
I, too, feel fateless.
I found a world in an old book
so darkly like my own.
But built on sands I’d never seen,
their marbled grains were blown
across the land and through the door
to an abandoned house
where lived not one single soul —
nor dog, nor cat, nor mouse.
Just a flock of lively shadows
that danced on floor and wall,
in a dread silent cotillion —
a shadow monster’s ball.
And though I was not invited,
my shade was welcomed in.
I was, to my own shadow, a
second-rate citizen.
But I am just a cruel slaver;
for when it’d broken free,
my shadow moved with such swift grace
as in ‘t I’d never seen.
And standing like a stone statue,
I watched these twirling forms,
and wondered whether they’d blown in
upon the desert storms?
Taken at the Pattadakal Temple Group on November 28, 2020.
I saw a field — once sunflowers —
now reaped at harvest time.
Just stiffened stalks and wrinkled leaves,
and one head past its prime.
Those glorious yellow petals,
drooping — facing the ground,
were the only way I knew the
crop that’d been mowed down.
How sad to be a survivor
who lives by a bowed head
once the ones that faced the sun
have joined the newly dead.
