The shadows get frighteningly long,
he watches in silence like a painter
whose mixed up colors in the palette
are found to be of no use, the pictures
are muddled by inept handling of colors.

once colorful skyline is suddenly
pecked in to pieces by winds,
the belligerent evening birds in discord;
the child playing in the park now gives up
her carefully structured house,
receiving cues from swarms of darkness,
looks at her mother as if she isn't  interested,
anymore, as if feeling the encroaching loneliness.

"Evening is a spoiler of beautiful things"
he jots down on the page of the day in his mind
"it's  enticing beauty is just a masquerade"
a truth he would vouch as a fact of life.

It's time to be back home, the dusk falls
holding mom's finger she goes
back to the lighted space of warmth
that has an assurance of kiss any moment,
on his way she sends a smile, just a stranger
till two days before, as if saying "See you tomorrow"
this little one is a fresh guest of breeze
a pure blessing, sunshine rare in winter.

This rusted garden bench knows him well,
the fragrance of mango blossoms from a land distant
in a season long past still spreads the scent of musk
touches somewhere deep, brings
memories from a land so far,  a land where
evenings were spent under the shades of mango trees
in exhilaration, awaiting the mango fruit season.

A change in the lighting of sky overturns everything.
time administers it's hidden poison drop by drop,
the memories of an evening from afar asks in a feeble voice
"Will the child come to the park to play tomorrow again?"