Chasing Sunshine

The tea leaves dance
In the boiling water,
Lending to it,
Their rich colour,
Even as the aroma wafts
Into the room yonder.

The tea cup on the counter top
Is a faded blue with indelible stains,
And a chipped edge to boot.

And yet it serves its purpose well
As her dainty fingers clasp its handle
And she purses her lips
For the first sip,
Which is lost in a grimace
As the scalding liquid
Makes its way past her burned tongue.

The tea cup has sat on the coaster
On the unremarkable table
In the tiny room,
For as long as it has taken
For the sun to give way to the moon,
Its contents a watery, brown liquid,
Rendered unpalatable
By the mere passage of time.

She sits by the window
Watching through unseeing eyes,
The world gives pause to its busyness,
Even as she puts on the mantle of hers.

The day has not quite begun,
For the morning seems reluctant
To make its presence known,
To be seen and felt –
Much like those who groan
When their alarms go off,
Even as light struggles
To outdo darkness,
In a battle older than time.

The flow of cars outside my window,
Had started long before,
In that liminal state when you know
What is about to unfold,
Even without being told.

It is a rhythm that repeats
Every day, not missing a beat,
And yet it isn’t without change.
For I have lost the spring
In transitioning
From slumber to wakefulness.

We are like the stars
Billions of us
Scattered all over
Racing towards our ends
Never giving in to that truth
In sheer acceptance.

We think we love our progeny
So completely and selflessly
Because we brought them forth
Into existence
Although every life that was birthed
Is racing towards its certain end
Why would we wish that upon
These people we claim to be our own?
And yet again we never give in
To that veritable truth
In sheer acceptance.

We think we know ourselves
Our inner machinations
And our deepest motivations
Why is it then
Despite our deepest misgivings
We wake up to repeat the cycle
Of endless striving?
We have mastered this art
Of never giving in
To the blatantly obvious truths
Staring us in our faces
In sheer acceptance.

Just an hour ago
The view from my window
Was as windy, as it was grey.

And suddenly now,
As I look out again,
I see a streak of bold blue
And a gentle swaying,
Of the remaining leaves,
On the boughs of the Japanese Maple.

Can both be true,
The grey and the blue,
The wind and the gentle breeze?

The wind is moaning a deep loss,
It howls, wails and shrieks ,
Carrying with it the iciness
That could only be the harbinger
Of a cold, calculated death.

It is quite unremarkable,
This Banshee like demeanour
That the wind has begotten,
On a deceptively bright winter day,
And perhaps it is why the wind unleashes
Its icy fury with a renewed vigour.

The mountains are too far away,
And yet they do not fail to echo
Her moanful, soul crushing wails,
The faintest of which haunt you,
To the very core of your aching bones.

It is a distant cry
From a faraway place,
Deeply buried in the lap
Of that craggy crevice
To which the wind carried its agony,
And in having done that,
Found herself an ally.

They tossed her upon a rock
After they were done with her,
To be mauled and maimed,
And thereafter scavenged.

If she knew what was afoot,
She gave no inkling of it,
As she lay perfectly still.

Perhaps it was that her limbs,
And her parched, hoarse throat,
Were done for, as was her petrified self.

And so she just lay there,
Broken, exposed, undone,
A breath away from being unborn.

Where but some months ago
They had shimmered
Under the startling gaze
Of the blazing sun,
A bright, resplendent green –
Slowly, with the passage of time,
They mellowed to tinges
Of yellow and orange,
Then rich red wine –
And now they lie
On the cold, ground,
Brittle, dry, dead, and brown –
Nobody waxes eloquent
When they are thus reduced,
From a throne of promise,
And of striking grandeur,
They have been brought low,
And even with the dust
To which they return,
As the earth reclaims
What had always been,
Her very own.

She has no qualms
In receiving the remnants
Of erstwhile striking beauty,
Unflinchingly in equanimity,
Unlike the mortals
Who lavish glory
On all that glitters,
She carries on,
With giving and receiving,
As she has for an eternity.

When you seek wisdom,
In its profoundness,
Look not in the annals
Of books written
By mere mortal hands,
Claiming to be divine;
Look instead, in the seasons
That come and go,
For they are as ancient,
As time itself,
Breathing gently,
Through the waning sun
And the driest spells,
The timeless lessons
Of belonging without boundaries.

The eagle soars high up in the sky,
Its wings spread out on either side –
A veritable picture of elegance.

From its vantage point it sees
A whole lot of everything,
Which is not in the least overwhelming,
For the fine print is obscured,
In the face of its single minded mission.

When it has circled the skies thus,
Until its precise vision
Has locked in,
On a prey that its hungry self desires,
That is when it swoops down,
Poised talons and all,
To claim its kill.

Here lies a path
That is well trodden,
And yet,
Almost a secret.

It is not that those who walk
Down its beaten track,
Are reticent story tellers;
As with any other collective
Of human beings,
This one too has those that are wont
To tell their story,
As repulsive as it might seem.

No, it is not that
There is a dearth of story tellers,
Or their stories –
If is more so,
The nature of these fables,
That keeps the curious minds
At a two arm distance.

So when it is that one strays
In the course of life’s journey,
Onto this exacting path,
There’s a momentary blindness,
Which warped in a time bubble,
Presents itself as endless.
Beyond this stretch of darkness,
Lies a vagueness of getting used to –
Getting used to the grey walls
Of towering, lifeless trees,
That crowd into the path of vision;
To the damp ground beneath
And the bleakness of the overhead skies.

Yet for all the drudgery,
There does lie ahead,
A path –
As unappealing as it may seem,
It does perhaps,
Lead to someplace, or something,
That isn’t as bleak as the beginning.

The death of a dream
Comes with a finality
That isn’t as evident
When it takes birth.

When it was nascent,
Still a fledgling,
Not quite ready to take flight,
You breathed life into it,
In the silence of the starry nights.

The wind whispered your hopes
For the young one,
It wafted across the valley
Carried by the birdsong.

And that is how it took shape,
Slowly, across the span of a lifetime,
A wisp of hope dressed as a wish,
Indeed, an incandescent dream.

And now it lies extinct,
Smoke emanating from the dead tip
Of the extinguishes matchstick,
There is no death knell,
The ocean’s darkest swell
Rises above to quell it,
And it is gone
Just like that,
As if it never existed.