Droplet! nay Ocean! A Perpetual Enigma

Dangling on the slick slippery edge of a needle

Afloat the bough of a mighty pine

I found many more like me,

Bathed in that morning glimmer of the 

crawling, pendiculating, sparkling Sun.

It were all smiles, so fresh, so crystal, 

Tiny droplets of the vernal deliquescence

Ready to elope to the effervescent nothingness

With every fleeting moment and to reappear

Once more at the bidding of our darling Moon.

And yet again kindle on those sprigs and spines.

But was snatched away one fine morning.

An impetuous breeze gliding through gigantic Himalayas 

Did shorn me away, as I slipped and plunged,

And fell to smithereens, all sucked up by earth below.

Terra firma, a dark, danky, unending muddle.

Stupor, asphyxiated, absolute dizziness took charge.

It seemed the end of it.

I had fallen from eclectic heavens into a dumb freeze.

I was dead, no more the glittering charming dew drop.

I was being siphoned, consumed, deeper and deeper

Unconscious, muddy, maligned, sinful and profane.

Till I dropped into a subterranean pool of icy melt.

And thence, once again

Through meandering Bhagirathi

The mighty Ganges cleansed and purified

I reached the Ocean.

Saline, sullied, muddy and murky

Totally lost, sans an identity and a name,

Finding hard to breathe, choked and asphyxiated.

Burnt and evaporated in the fire of expiation

Once again I was lifted unconscious

By that surging mighty whiff of the wind.

High, higher, up-up, I dropped yet again

Again up the needle of the mighty pine.

Up on that Himalayan cliff all glitter and golden

Bathed yet again in the crawling, pendiculating, sparkling Sun.

-            Shailendra Aima, June 30, 2018

Poem - Stop! Private! No thoroghfare!

In the well protected fortress, I call ‘Self’,

I don’t let any intruders in.

The deep distressing shadows of my eyes

Stabbing the passersby, the strangers,

Broadcast an obtrusive alert:

“Stop! Private! No thoroughfare!”

I shut the door, stand guard,

Cagey about those I call my own.

And the canny, eloquent blinks too

Won’t let them into the precincts of 

My vitals - a citadel of flesh and blood 

Painted in the graffiti of

My doubts, my reticent tears, my subdued furies,

My weird, unbridled flights, and 

Some ravishing, seductive fancies, 

Eager to burst out at unearthly hours. 

In that harried, hard-pressed privacy

I want to peg these walls so high,

High above the flight of the birds,

That my blooming fruiting patios

Remain cloaked, hidden beneath the labyrinths,

A maze of self created illusions

Of I, Me, Mine.

  

Where nobody shares

The zing, flavor, fragrance and the tang. 

And I stream and strain the in and out,

And docket the glimpse, the glory, the peep

Of those not yet tried, tested, examined.

As of now I want the walls

Of flesh and blood to be high, higher,

Even confined and chocking.

- Shailendra Aima, May 20, 2018