Chasing Sunshine

A message on a paper
That was folded and placed
Within a clear bottle,
And tossed carefully,
Onto the crest of a wave
Riding back into the sea,
A true world traveller,
Catapulted into the air,
Thrown back onto the water,
The sun, moon and stars,
Celestial observers
Of its endless sojourn.

Did the message lose meaning
As time passed by,
Did the hand that hurled it,
Forget it in time?
Would a year or five,
Make it less alive,
When it was finally retrieved,
From captivity?

Two eager hands
Held the bottle,
Both wet and slippery
And a touch jittery,
As shaking fingers,
Unscrewed the lid,
To extract the treasure,
That lay within.

A chance draught
And a mistimed opening,
A lethal combination
For the message in the bottle,
As the ink returned,
To the depths of the sea,
Free at last,
To taste the glory
Of unbridled flow.

Gone with the ink
Is a message written
On a piece of paper
Once long ago,
Or maybe not so –
For who can ever know?
Did the message lose meaning,
Now that it is no more?
Will the hand that breathed it
Into life, and set it forth
On its unknown, unheralded journey,
Ever perceive, even slightly,
That it is lost
Forever more –
Blue ink wedded to the blue sea.

He twists the stalk
Of the wilting leaf,
Rather mercilessly,
Crushing it almost,
Between his fingers,
Till it comes undone,
And the deed Is done,
The leaf is parted
From the branch, and the tree.

He looks at the leaf
Now held in his hand,
A lifeless remnant –
Dismembered and unwanted;
Before he tosses it
Into the wind,
He crumbles it
Under the force
Of a tight fist.

Nothing that’s worthy remains,
Of the doomed leaf –
Its broken relief
Lies scattered,
On the reluctant ground;
There is no dignity
For the likes of it,
In life, or in its void.

You’ve wondered long and hard
Whether to go down,
The well trodden path
Complete with lamp posts,
And the occasional resting spots;
Or the one that is so forgotten,
That it has diminished to the point
Of near non-existence.

You have wondered about them both
In almost equal measure –
Although to be fair,
You’ve gone down the one
Quite far along,
To see if it’s worth treading upon,
And yet the pull of the other,
Tugs at your heartstrings
Like a long forgotten lover,
Who turns up at your doorstep,
A red rose in hand,
To ask you out.

There is so much allure
In this clandestine encounter,
That you pause in your tracks,
To turn your back on certainty –
And take one step forward,
On the journey down
The long forgotten
And yet, once beloved road.

She fills dirt into a pot
Shakes it up then pats it down
All the way till it’s near the top.
She places a seed firmly in,
Moistens the fresh soil,
Then places the pot on a ledge
By the French window,
And then the job is done.

The pot sits by the window
It has, for more than a month,
Soaking up the morning rays,
From the majestically rising sun,
Getting drenched by the drizzle
Gently sprayed from the watering can,
All around it, there’s a bounty,
Of nature’s verdant beauty,
Spilling over from the garden,
To multiple pots bearing plants on the floor –
And yet for all that, it stands bare, an eye sore.

The boat rocks gently by the pier,
Held in its place by a rope
That serves as the anchor.

The tide comes in,
And he decides
That it’s time to set sail;
So the boat starts its journey,
Just as the sun sets,
Into the fading light of the evening.

If he had qualms,
He didn’t show them,
He took them along with him.

The storm arrives
Like a wild child,
Breaking through the calm
Of the passive night.
The boat is now wildly tossed,
Upon the choppy waters,
Of the roaring sea –
Its moans are drowned,
As are his.

The boat rocks gently
On the waters,
Now stilled under the yellow
Of the wakening sky;
It has nowhere to go to,
And nowhere to be.

The depths of the sea
Rise up in graceful swells,
To steer the boat along,
On its aimless journey.

The clouds have hung heavy
in the pregnant skies
For days on end now.
Through the oppressive heat
And the lingering sweat,
People have looked at them,
With eyes forlorn,
Waiting for the rain,
That the clouds seem to promise
Will arrive soon,
Riding on a downpour.

When the rain comes finally,
It is not as if
The floodgates opened –
Nor even a garden sprinkler at its peak.
If it were a steady drizzle,
Even that would be a welcome relief –
But no, it was none of these.

The rain came down,
No, it hung in the air,
Like the suspended disbelief
Of the human collective,
That saw the condensation
Rather than feel it –
For it was nothing more than
A vast expanse of mist.

The sweat hangs close to the brow,
The upper lip, and then crawls down
The sweaty skin, beneath sticky clothing.
There is no dearth of moisture here,
The clouds haven’t failed,
The fault lay in their faith.

You look around you –
There are scores surrounding you,
Some smile politely, then make small talk,
None of which strays beyond the weather,
Which is no longer summer –
The chill a harbinger,
Of a lonesome winter.

The train left the station
A long while ago,
You are farther from the start,
Than you are to the finish.

Despite your discomfort,
You’ve come to realise,
That the best recourse
Is to stay put,
In this bustling carriage
So full of life.

Perhaps it is,
That some of it will rub off,
On your lonesome soul,
Nudging you an inch closer to whole.

The green of the fields,
And the blue of the lake,
Rush past you,
But you don’t take them in.

As the day gives way
To a gentle night,
You try to settle in
But sleep takes a while.

In the stillness of the night
When all else is quiet,
You are finally not alone,
Seized as you are,
By your demons,
Who’ve bided their time
Rather patiently,
And come hither now
To keep you company,
Even as you cower,
And shrink within
Your flimsy blanket.

She stacks them up,
From the bottom,
To the very top;
Each layer adding weight,
To the increasingly precarious tower.

When it comes tumbling down,
She is very nearly on her way out,
The lights dimmed,
And the silence around
Is deafeningly loud;
It is just as she had known it would be,
The unsettlingly eerie quiet
Before the crash of the storm.

She casts a final glance
At the broken remnants
Of her ungainly tower,
A multitude of layers,
Painstakingly gathered,
Over a handful of decades,
Each one hurt as much or worse
Than its neighbours.

Never gather them
Had been the refrain,
That she had ignored
Again and again,
And now the burden
Of this enormous tower,
Crushes her spirits
That give out in a breath,
Drawn one last time,
From beneath a mound
Of lifelong regrets.

This tidal wave that rushes in
Will carry with it on its way out,
A stray sandal and a beach towel.
The child who’s lost their belongings
Cries out as if to remonstrate,
A mirroring played out
For the benefit of no one.

Meanwhile what’s left behind
Seemingly untouched, perfectly intact –
The devastation of a broken shell
From the power of a far greater swell
Than what the ocean and his coy bride
Have birthed in this boisterous tide.

This moment is as universal
As it is uniquely personal,
It has landed in more than a billion ways
Across the breadth of human experience;
For some it will be a cherished slice of time
That they’ll carry within their hearts forever,
Others will have reasons to remember
This moment, that are not as pleasant,
And some will not detect its passage
As unremarkable as it is –
Yet, beyond the confines of the earth
It is but a single moment,
The same, and yet so different.