Lying in a trance on a rocking chair,
In the living room of my quiet home,
The buzzing sound of a fretful bee,
Woke me up from my pleasant reverie.
Again and again the droning hiss,
Fell faintly in my vacant ear.
It came so close from the window sill,
Fastened tight with glass shutters.
On looking up, I chanced to glance,
A little fly that reeled around,
Trying in vain to find its way,
Through the narrow slit, into the open sky.
For the poor insect trapped inside,
It was a matter of live or die,
Again and again it beat so hard,
Against the glass window that lay ajar.
I watched lazily its poignant tussle,
To get away or to stay asunder.
Desperate between life and death,
It mustered all its remaining strength.
Try hard and try again,
Was all that what it dared to do,
And every feat converged on –
Getting out through the window pane.
Alas! Across the room, quite close,
Lay open the door it never did see,
With hurdles none to block its way,
Or hinder it in its forward flight.
Had it taken a different course,
It could dart out into the world it sought,
And spared the strength it burnt in vain,
In the frenzied move to set it free.
By treading through the beaten track,
We might perish like the trapped fly.
For reaching out into wider skies,
We may take as well a different route.