Friday, December 7, 2018

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

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