~
Precious Padma
You dearest aquatic flower
You grew in murky waters
Unblemished by its impurity
But come they did
To ****** your petals
And leave you a burning stem
Never can they take from you
The spirit of your plainsong
It continues to grow in your sisters
And in a time and season so near
They will sing your hymn
As one substantial voice
The changing winds will then
Lift it higher
~

Sunrays peep in through imaginary windows...
The heart of the canopied forest
beats a deep throb of chlorophyllic pulse,
Invisible organisms wait in hiding,to smell my odour
The wet ground tries to take me in...dragging me deep into it.
This place always makes me blurry eyed,
Even today as tears run down my cheeks,
The sunlight refracts against them weaving for me a rainbow of psychedelic hues!
Amber memories hanging by the barks makes me weary of my thoughts...
But just then when I take a step to touch them, I hear footsteps coming behind me...
A quick run and a hide...I see him moving upto the exact spot where I had left behind my candid footmarks,
I feel a tingle when he touches them calling out to me with a cracking voice...
And yet I choose to remain in hiding, feigning oblivion much like the way the oceanic storms do in order to take down the will of the mighty ships.
If only I had sunk deep into the centre of the earth,
I would never had to be the mistress of this strangest potion of a feeling, one that just blends longing and feigning perfectly into one!
Some kind of pains are like the fires of hell
You never want to be burnt alive...
I strain my ears trying to hear him out, the farest sounds return to me amplifying a hundredfold, yet all that lingered in the air was a human silence.

Maybe he had understood my dilemma,
My resolve of not wanting to see his tender face again
The fear that once again my petrified heart would be cast away from the spell... That it would set me free...
All I wanted now was a locked space for myself and my heart.

Once out of my hiding place, I ran, stumbling, up to the place where his footsteps had frozen in a previous time.
Touching the place, I could not contain myself
It was my turn to call out to him, only but in a voiceless language!

Confined within rusty iron bars
Grounded eternally to hop and trip
Wishing to fly into Heaven’s starry bower
A bird beats her wings in vain
Voicing her anguish in tremulous trills

There is hunger at every tip of her feather
To fly and flutter through the pathless air,
Piping melodious tunes to drown the earth,
Seeing lands never eyed by anyone before

Nursing her dreams, she beats her wings again
To reach a place where the soul sings
Alas! The clamor of her beating resounds
And she falls asleep exhausted!

In her sleep, her desires limp back
She dreams of shooting into higher altitudes
Becoming a speck among fleecy clouds

As these scenes crowd her vision,
Sculpting sweet images,
She beats her wings again
To feel tired and feeling tired to fall asleep
And in sleep to dream again.....!