Mother:Always

 

Mother: Always

Picking at your winter skin

dried on the underside of your

middle-aged feet and

engrossed in a tale of murder

while working at your daily bread

you suddenly start

and wonder what are you doing

in the dead of the night

while death might be lurking around

and there will be no trace of you

after an interval

of zero to infinite time.

The perception fever is

without heat or fire

Just it won't allow

you to sit back light

and watch the passing scenes

that have roots and a soil

to keep them bound

to a reality that appears almost real.

But after you have looked for

the dead amidst the darkened trees

and the lonely looking paths

in the bed of dead leaves

and in the familiar corners,

After you have lost and pined

for a forty-year-old long togetherness

brimming with more love

than you can ever give.

You look upon life

with more indifference

than yesterday

with people staging in

and staging out

to their own music,

your longings still manifesting

in the smell of old sarees

and faded bangles

and an invisible presence

in the corner of the degenerating house.

-Niharika Mishra

(All rights reserved)

Again Came Rain

 

Rain came again today

And wiped the sky clean,

of its sunny splendour,

Went into a wanton, frenzied dance

for a time

and departed

with the rash impulsiveness it had appeared.

People talked among themselves

How someone

worshipped at the pinnacle

of attainment and affluence died

and went away alone

on the path to eternity

leaving behind

his accumulated opulence

and hallowed existence.

His worshippers,

soaked in pain and torment,

lamented the loss

of his angelic presence,

his smile,

his magical demeanour,

They kept pining

through odd days,

weeks and months

You pondered,

how you still kept alive

after the sheltering canopy

of love and comfort

was pulled away from above your head

so abruptly,

How you smile still,

and start prancing around inside,

with joy, as soon as rain drops fall.

Nobody ever beckons you,

except for this wind, this storm,

and the prolonged solitude of

these queer yellow afternoons.

Nobody cherishes

your untamed unhaltered soul.

Even long after rain has departed,

you keep standing in trance

same way, at the same place,

wet and spellbound,

covered with droplets,

waiting for something or someone.

You keep looking for something

in the peripheral sky

and bounce back,

right to your place

in the queued events of the day,

and keep standing there

all by yourself

without woes.

-Niharika Mishra-

(All rights reserved)

Again Came Rain

Rain came again today

And wiped the sky clean,

of its sunny splendour,

Went into a wanton, frenzied dance

for a time

and departed

with the rash impulsiveness it had appeared.

People talked among themselves

How someone

worshipped at the pinnacle

of attainment and affluence died

and went away alone

on the path to eternity

leaving behind

his accumulated opulence

and hallowed existence.

His worshippers,

soaked in pain and torment,

lamented the loss

of his angelic presence,

his smile,

his magical demeanour,

They kept pining

through odd days,

weeks and months

You pondered,

how you still kept alive

after the sheltering canopy

of love and comfort

was pulled away from above your head

so abruptly,

How you smile still,

and start prancing around inside,

with joy, as soon as rain drops fall.

Nobody ever beckons you,

except for this wind, this storm,

and the prolonged solitude of

these queer yellow afternoons.

Nobody cherishes

your untamed unhaltered soul.

Even long after rain has departed,

you keep standing in trance

same way, at the same place,

wet and spellbound,

covered with droplets,

waiting for something or someone.

You keep looking for something

in the peripheral sky

and bounce back,

right to your place

in the queued events of the day,

and keep standing there

all by yourself

without woes.

-Niharika Mishra-

(All rights reserved)

The Day of Freedom

 

It is not a mere ritual 

To rise and dive into the spirit of freedom

 To recall the bravehearts

 who spent days and nights

in the dungeons of prisons, 

forests and hideouts, 

whose tears and blood made the new soil.

It is prayer to bow down 

and reminisce the courage 

we would never have to court pain

 for a motherland. 

A heart truthful, 

A mind for self- assessment, 

Eyes that do not close on the wrongs, 

A conscience clear as a forest fountain, 

Action; pure, uncontaminated

Let these be the best tribute to a Mother 

and her freedom bearers 

who brought light and a new dawn 

for a nation that saw its flag 

fluttering in the zenith high,

 beyond the reach of perpetrators of sin. 

Freedom was not free, 

Freedom is not free, 

In the path of redemption and love 

that will unbind our wings 

at the dusk of departure at last, 

One salute in the name of motherland, 

One humble murmuring into the air; 

We are, because you were.

15/8/2021

Mother:An Elegy

 

Mother: An Elegy

Who could have fathomed

How deep the roots will have to

dive, wrestling against

the earth's crust

to wring out water 

and food.

What we saw was the canopy

of green foliage 

offering free shelter

from sun and rain.

When mother lay 

on the pyre

her lips were locked tight

in a smile,

for she was free now

from the everyday death 

she died

trying to wring out

food and water for others

from her marrow.

Nobody saw or heard

the thousand words

her lips held from escaping

lest the walls should crumble

around her.

Now she is at peace.

May be the world is

a better place today

for some  mothers,

A place

they won't want to leave.

NOMAD

 

Nomad

That you wear this nomadic life 

on your sleeve and move 

from house to house

scene to scene, drawing lines 

on water and then 

shuttling to another horizon altogether

in burserk, 

It only speaks of your rootlessness.

You have forgotten even to be sad,

Your eyes are dry like a perennial desert

The rain comes, but in such odd 

and strange hours that you 

do not recognise the clouds

once in a while.

A flood rises in you purposelessly

not seeking any shore to drown

but as a random thirst,

There is no hunger but of the stomach;

That also you do not feed with zest,

 You spend the empty hours in langour, without chasing a Buddha 

or a denouncement, 

Stray flashes of thoughts 

hiting the walls of your non-being,

when you are not struggling

to meet the necessity of the necessities.

Purposefully someone something wrote

in the slate of time,

And you lost a home,

So that you will be making homes here and there, until the times comes,

to fly back home,

Past the etching of a half hazard tale

of half inclination

and half comatose existence.

Till then it is frenzied songs

sung quietly in the long summer hours 

of the day or the wintry nights,

Or the afternoons when the 

sky casts the gloom and suddenly 

changes into the storm's costume 

forcing everything into chaotic madness.

Then you dance, then you come alive.

You breath the ordinary charm

of the extraordinary days 

like the fragrance of mellowed afternoons.

The overwhelming moments

keep whispering,

that you are here

for a few seasons,

So are the happy yellow flowers 

falling outside the window-

Arriving, blooming and disappearing. 

THE DAYS OF CORONA

The lemon seeds

fell into the cup, 

with subdued protest

before I could intervene.

The mint leaves in their small pot

were blackening 

as I noticed.

They lacked sunlight,

I lacked sunlight too.

Unlike the leaves

that were dying indoors, 

I was blossoming 

with the blissful 

water-light moments of my own

granted impromptu.

The intermittent journeys

down the gullies

and the by-lanes of the mind

that I missed, 

the existence has gifted,

It had understood their need.

What the life's necessities

had stolen away

flinging me headlong

into the gruesome scuffle

of daily subsistence,

The creator had blessed with,

without depriving 

the visitations to the manifested world.

Transformation: In Waiting

Transformation: In Waiting

The pale pall of gloom descends upon the little sky

playing hide and seek among the wind-excited foliage.

A strange amalgamation

of light and darkness 

tugs at the strings of delicately hanging strains of an old tune, 

with which

one is  clueless, of

the exactness of music, 

which is neither pain

nor happiness.

It is nothing that leads you either down some old road 

of nostalgic pleasure 

or through the static, still 

afternoon monotony of 

repeated moments

that often passes through your somehow reverberating sojourn with time and timelessness,

randomly vacillating between thoughts and calm.

There is still a discovery

waiting somewhere,

An awakening that is beyond

the reach of your seemingly

self sufficient yet 

infant self 

which a cosmic turn of events

may change.