Last of a beloved set
of bone China plates
just developed a lesion.

I hold the torch deep and
find traces of your presence
here: footsteps that show
you passed this way.

This is my Janus face:
confounding who to heed:
Señora, I who call to you,
or I who harbour all
the muslin shades of dusk
in my shadow soul?

Now the wind is blowing
wild, biting the hissing fire.
The hour when waves recede
and thoughts retreat,
the slow winding hour,
when I commune with you.

Light begets light and so
come finding me, for
wavering, I may never
head any further here.

new depression in the ocean
coming our way, that's so uncertain
this rain -

it can pour down very heavily,
then I won't come and sit pining for you
here, by my window, lone in the storm;

it can blow mildly across the land,
losing its passion down the road
and then I won't come, there's one more
thing I can get drenched in, besides -

it can wheeze and whistle down in the wind
drizzling past like the waters of blessing
then I won't come, there's one more
thing I can bow my head to,

or it may not rain at all, all wind and no zest
and then I won't come, there's one more
agony to savour, besides,

your love

Daubed wet, the horizon blue,

featureless:
three stripes of wet green
ascending in

wet sands of the bank river
winding, dancing ripples

little red rose smiling shy
behind rows of wet grass

rain is the smell of earth
cast wide, love is

staring at the impossible gulf
wanting to cross puddles

now the day is done:
gone all the song-masters
and dream-makers;
and now, I am alone
by your side.

Sometimes, you escape me
and then this giant stride
straight into my heart;

Ceaseless in waves.

Love scattered across your forehead
like stars flickering over
the eastern sky:

Is it your hair that flits
across your smile in the breeze?

Senora, the swallows have been
shot like a bow and they
go screeching over the horizon
echoing in the distance;

Let me hold your hand and
site by your side like this:
scarce these quiet hours
that mull like the blue moon
in the hours before dawn.

It is night now, and I am bloom all over.
Creeper crawling on earth, beneath:
the thicket of my blades, there lies
secret a crypt to eternity concealed.
I'm jasmine and I conceal a grave.

What is more deadly, say, concealment,
or the thing concealed? This is mystery.

I'm growing everywhere: by Himalaya
gazing at thunder cracking up the peaks.
By the well, where spake the Nazarene.
Clambering up to the heights of temple
towers, and kissing the eastern clouds.

But here is the whiff of fragrant endings:
concealment, more deathly than death.

More and more you build
temples of stone.
Everywhere,
hewing rocks of the earth,
you set about your project:
But,
do you see -
that small bit of rock
would be enough, more
effective for Me to manifest,
all of a fist’s size,
this your hardened heart?

I'm kneading a complex thought now:
too amorphous, this, but,
too much mush and it's mess.
Why are you smiling at me a
bunch of multi-colour bell-peppers?
No, it is not potato season.
But I'm searching for roots of
our association. I need a congealant.
You are quite a handful though.
Sweet, but not sugar kind of;
Cinnamon, may be - served best
with chocolate warm. Too strong,
alone. I will serve you some cloves -
hot, but not the chilli kind of. Chew
on it. I have a kitchensink to clear.

Yes, I am the same God
that dwells among you
Grace incarnate
again and again
in times and among peoples
various as the stars

if that mighty being
beyond all description
but experience
ever begat anything
it is but me,
me, love and grace

wherever the heart shrinks
and tyranny reigns
and lust and greed
masquerade as law
into that parched desert
do I descend, when
Jordan baptizes the soul

Ichthys of God, I make twelve
the anglers of fisherfolk
who cast their nets wide
and catch me in their soul
so they can behold
Him, that I am,

no greater miracle than this
was ever made

I followed the line of smoke at dawn:
Smoke from ebbing fires that
burned all night, leading to
some unknown end
past the horizon: eagles
circled above and crows
sliced the hum of the wind,
as I walked on,
shadows
of a buried life emerged:
Laughter, cries of joy, who is that
running after severed kites?
Colours splashed in merry
summers; that corner refuge
hiding during scary fights -
Memories like a river
roaring out of the gorge,
ruins
of a buried life,
emerged out of the horizon
beyond the line of smoke,
figures that retreated into shadows
and corners beyond approach,
memories of buried, forgotten times...

this hour of smoke and mist,
stay still, for all the stars
glittering here and the moon
sliding down your back
bare to horizon worlds

pressed to my *****
the vast sky glowing
in unnumbered mysteries

soaking in the fragrance
as dew settles by your hair
this surly hour
flowing over your throbbing
heart, soft as the breeze

streaming silent by the curtains
unfurled, the sailboat of our lives
on dreamy waters

let them cease, creations
of the faltering mind
dissolve, all the sensations,

cupped to an ancient warmth
lives lived of long whose lights
reach us now
here, I hold you, to the
rhythm of timelessness

Let us write together, the story of the night:
flow like the stars in the distant river,
hopping stalk to stalk, you of the same plume;
Here I part your hair, and plant a kiss, holy
emerges the passage to the promised land
and the miracle, that rises like
the song from the dunes, from your dimples
and twinkles in your eyes, moon-kissed
the road that forks: this is where we wrong
took the turn, going back to where we started
stuck, deep under, we will peer periscoped
into the wide sky, dark, studded diamonds
and my hands slide into the clouds that
gather gentle the rains behind your neck:
this is the recipe for a storm, monsoon tide;
my forefinger on your lips:  keep silent now,
oracle mage, for your words can land
like summer rain on the roof tiles, birthing
them worlds, that cascade the starlines;
which were as one in the beginning;
shoreless we go, transmigrating star to star

When the winds got to the depths
they came alive, them embers
that I let smoulder
deep in the sacral chambers
bathed I returned in grace
but not before

I shouted out into the well
a fiery hymn
a flaming rant
empty now my soul
drenched in the echoes
each more tormenting
than before

this is how you lose it
this is how

of the eroding stone
         by the ephemeral stream;
of the reed tottering in
                           the placid lake;

'tis the darkest of nights
moonless, hope-less;
but, the fragrance of jasmine
is creeping up the air,

kissing
the feisty cheeks of vermilion
emerging yonder easterly.

A tear splash and a ripple
dying in waves of joy.

Lingering in clusters around the idle seas
leaning inward dotted by
dried, them channels of hyacinth rivers
come like an old city emerging
out of the clouds like hundreds
of coloured cardboard boxes
packed away parted by unruly lanes
and withered lakebeds
and winding roads laden with lamps
the hunger for the sky has skived
away granite, now lakes
them empty quarries that grin
like the old grandmother
toothless, whitening hair thinned out
those forests now reservationed
rises a spire, aspiring for heaven
from this mud rolled windwashed earth

In the alleyway of sorcerers
and tricksters
One step back, ten deepward
away, away, from sun and lime,

forms, thickened smoke, gone
all the familiar, but fear

an industrial hammer
beating to a pneumatic heart
pulverized, powdered glass

Now lining the string to my kite
soaring, one among the shapes
dotting the kaleidoscope
Retreat!, I can cut.

bangles, once they were
I gave you

Hooded, darkened, enveloped
in hushed hymns and
chimed mutterances
come hands held out of cloaks
that I accept for friendship
cold, as the heartless should be

erased, gone among
the shadows, lost a young soul
tottering at the edge of a cliff
tremor that ripped the heartland
blocks of stone, elevated
icons of hope and love
lining the pathway here
disfigured so beyond repair
even moonlight cannot restore

once a thinker, a poet, a scholar

where peddle the whispered
offerings of an underworld

I was not there when it all began
[ there in this fractal space, I know,
    beginnings can nest in beginnings]

but when I peered back in time,
I saw your shadow
stirring in the mists

yes, you measured out the verses,
threefold.

it was all in the pre-dawn hours,
before light

I bowed down to your majesty
and smote them who did not
I bowed down to your majesty
and cursed them who did not
I bowed down to your majesty
and loved them who did not

I bowed down to your majesty
and blessed them who did not

unsure
if it was you, or if it must be you
or if it must be anyone at all,

stirring in the shadows

or if my looking glass went
kaleido, before scopia.

but I know, of deep
where thoughts stir

I've seen your footprints
on the ***** of time.

they too know, the gulls,
the seas, and the skies,
and they know no war and death.
it must be you.

At the newshour on the TV station,
beamed to my lounge sofa tonight,
the vignette visual of peace:
a child being rushed to triage,
all limbs bound in bandage -
now, we are safe.
Our soldiers too, from the skies.
No casualties.
Only collateral damage
signaled in the sobbing siren.

And darkest the night when all seems
lost, parts thick the blanket of fog;
Desiccated to the bone when
moonless in agony,
go emptied of Spirit the skies,

Broken in Her temples,
desecrated in the shrines
veiled, chained, burned at stake;
Scattered lays She,
as hope among the stars.

Among a thousand tribes risen,
to burst forth again,
Diana and Ishtar, Athena and Brigid,
crimson the rays that flood
regnal the horizon in waves;

Who casts time in the thrall of Her dice
fire cannot burn, nor weapons hurt,
who measures worlds in Her strides,
the black rose, Mistress of the night,

Garlanded in skulls of a thousand such
who know not Her might
whose hands sewn Her garment great
trampled death under Her thunder trail
Here She comes the ancient One:

Was it them bubble colours
on the outside,
mellow summer beckoned
cold under the sheets
palm to your *****

Speaking lost in a language
of memories, welling up
genie-like finger tiptoeing
on the handle

or how tea stained the corners?
your eyes, lined black

distant bylane of long forgotten
when in rain we stopped by
porcelain, hands
clay-holding kiln-heated

fragrant vapour rising
morning in the chocolate cup

was it your lips that I
longed to find on the edges?

four seasons, etched
in the corrugations
that bore the wash-marks of time

broken - now lost, forgotten
the polka dots cup

I was shipped across seas whipped and cuffed
Cattle, not human I of colour. Aeons on,
I was finding hope
in the life of a carpenter's son.
here comes hooded, undead.

born on a shore kissed of seas, I grew up the country hill
swimming rivers at dusk gathering berries for the stars.

gathered to mercilessness in death.

My skin was hide for shoe and soap.
Herded into camps I was worked to death.
For you believe therefore I am.

O veneer that wears thin on a whim,

to think that gods can walk amongst you.
gory, gory your glory

blessed vaunted humanity.

I. Dawn

Dark, before dawn
asleep but
for some wandering souls
ask the winds, where do you go?
echoing destiny

II. Youth

friends we meet, those
companions on the thrilling
highway of life
past revolutions
and revelations
prisons and promenades

III. Love

beats the heart this way
but once.

IV. Anxiety

life, that master architect
chisels out our visage
inflicting pain and sorrow
betrayals, that
of least expected
disillusionment

V. Grace

always here
waiting,
with those winds
with those friends
veiled in love
not lost in betrayal

Far FAR from the world.... WORLD...
                       whorled my world

HERE condensed here con CON
                             con-densed dying densed

a **-HOme mmmme-me hewn in stone

Prison for prison pri pri pri sonnnn

here a drop of silence echoes
                          si lence sisisilensilensilense

pins pins pins dropped, trickling distant water
                                             trick-ling

in the pud-dle a mud-dle cal-led li-fe

a cave home, far away from home, is this

a noise of thoughts, rushing past
a gorge of silence.

how it was meant to be?

consuming homes in deluge, after the rains,

trickle silences, replaying lives, screened
all around in silken mists

lightning bolts prising open recesses dark.

It was a story I was writing -
very interesting, but,
it never ends:

Just when the clouds gathered
at the edge of the season,
a conflagration from the beginning
consumed all the hope;

looping backwards just
when I thought, I'd reached ******;

Like the story about the oasis
where all the chapters are about
mirages,

this is a story about love,
but all the chapters are about
how not to love.

I see a butterfly in my cup
that I never noticed before:
and it flew out and flew away.

In the winds that
blew the pages away.

You lie curled up this way by my side
budding rose waiting
to bloom, light plays with
shades on your face like in a Monet
piece: your lips in bloom,
touched up bright and curled hair,
waving in the breeze.
You suddenly proclaim in half-sleep,
'get ready, we've got an invite.'
You even cite
a phone number. As random
as it is, it brings a smile; and
when you ask for the time, I'm happy
you are awake, but then you ask,
'what shall I wear? After all, we
mustn't look plain at the do.'

The day when the jasmines embossed on the glass
were stained, nobody ventured into dust-laden streets
from where even the day was retreating.
Shadows, grew tall, four-headed monsters in the lamps
flickering from all over. Chasing a form, I ran
like a child after a severed kite, into the eye of the storm.
Bare footed, numb to pain, all the shards of broken
glass did not matter. At the end of the alley
disfigured receptacles, no doubt dead, lay greeting.
The sirens blared but I did not hear. The oaks
were falling by tomes, but  I did not hear. When
eagles were all that haunted this deathly hamlet,
I did not hear. When at the end of the alley
I fell to my feet and my hands were dyed red
from touching my feet, my eyes were too moist to see.

Three cars are parked by the clearing
I find, every night under the faint light
of the dim street lamps. Two of them,
sedans, red and black, while the other's
a hatchback, white in colour. All dusty
and faded before the occasional wash.

The wheels of the white car have dug
into the mud after the puddles caused
by rains cleared. And flowers and twigs
garment it. I thought they were a big
family but, one, they own  a small car,
and two, they seem to use it sparse?

The red sedan, always parked reverse,
is sometimes gone suddenly away and
at other times, stays parked for weeks.
I've seen him in and out; does he have
work out-stations? Good car, I must
say though, for he's young and single.

The black one is gone most days, and
sometimes, for days together, to return
covered in bird droppings. They moved
recently, this quiet couple who prefer
to keep to themselves. May be they go
on long weekend drives out of the city?

I wonder, gazing at them, sipping my
tea, by the window, late every night.
'Why don't you just go speak to them',
says my wife, tired of my speculations.
'Hmm...not today, bit tired. Tomorrow,
May be', I say, as I jot down these lines.

fragrant the thicket –

this morning hour of blue mists,

hope blooms in the bush

Circle of smoke and fire up high
winds of the late eve
dispersing, crimson tiara
of gulls and gusts

Captive bubble, I saw tears
on your cheeks, and let you free
oh the transient beauty
that exploded
tears on my cheeks

Sing peans to the upturned life,
possibilities skimming past
endless the stream of thoughts

that rush by the little selves
that rise and ebb in the vast

go go, Gustav free, setting clouds on fire.

Here you are, holding court
in the sanctuary hewn of stone
in the depths of my hardened heart

I was searching  everywhere

ages congealed in the story of my quest
distant those memories flashing in lightning hues
when we made for you a throne in the skies
you were a king, being vast and a Son.
Fire,  light, word and the cosmos.
You grow with me,  beating with my heart.

so many tongues invented sacred,
each the supreme and the last perfect for all times
ending futile muted
that broke your icons but
fail to uncontain and unlimit your vast formlessness

Now after so much death and darkness

clad in the ashes of those endless cycles of dissolution
with your hosts, ghosts and goblins
in the silences sliced by cymbals and bells
at the pinnacle depths of being
Holding court here

So wake up and what do we find,
the men in black, oh, aren't they back!
Didnt they blow up them planes
or helped those who did
or those who helped those who did?
or so we heard, why the gringos went
to smoke them out of their vents?
The men in black, oh now so cool -
we share hugs and name our friends!
Women, they won't be flogged in fields,
nor will they chop off erring arms,
nor them planes land in k-har
in exchange for killers barred,
no buddhas left to smash,
or so they say, but for what their books say+:
so the women, just tented,
working from wherever caged,
men must never trim their manes
even the cricketers have turned out to play,
though be just the men eh!
Beware if you are a poet though,
or sing, or a singh - coz nobody sure
if you will be lynched yet;
Half the country is staying shut,
half a million may run (or so says the UN)
But they surely come in peace
armed as they go on our humvees;
Mothers throw their babies over,
what a liberation! perfect sense
to the kahn across the Durand fence;
And no we here across the Jhelum
so busy with the mayhem
that anderson's caused to our playmen;
Oh the reformed men in spotless black
they're back across the pens,
and we can now go back to sleep
with not a ***** in our conscience

+or as they say they say -
they all say how they say
is what the books say anyway

Girl with the tribal tattoo,
tell me, what that on your arm left?
Lone, the wolf on the farm
totem ranging the dark,
we are of one kind;
Digging for them old spades
there at the Embankment,
we went wrong at the right turn
and still reached the end:
there was a bus for every misstep;
Posting you cards from abroad,
a mystery penny of a call;
Lost in a circle of smoke
not the signpost blame.
Late at night when the winds tiptoe
on roof tiles and you duck
into my arms unafraid;
Here we walk, hand in hand,
in the rain, now in the park
past the winter eve.
Girl with the tribal tattoo,
we are of one kind.
Old, the totem call of the night.
And the dragon writhes when
among them gongs amok
red the colour of the season new.

Blood in winter snow:
dying sun at dusk, filling
the skies in sorrow.

It is a morning like no other
when hope is smeared across the skies
Among the mourners I am alone
death cannot bind, when life could not.

A law binds us of old, to kinsmen
and clansmen, and the court
of law can be crooked
where evidence is omniscient.

In the chamber of faith
elevated on the altar
where we light pious incense
is the decorated image
of disbelief - for death
here, is the final word,

and who knows if there was
one in the beginning?

In the heart, the answer
where a wave knocks
of love, daring storms
and disregarding falls,
waiting to wash our feet
and cleanse our lives.

So are we here for a time,
on a sojourn we meet awhile:

Now darkness is overcast
and shadows grow on the walls
Now time is distant
and memories pale
But the miracle of your advent
never fades in my soul.

Rain song in the deep, spiraling
camels down the hazy dunes
mystery of birds in the early sky

glimpses, working on inner space;

I caught the shadow of your smile:
scribbled across the skin my soul
the mystic syllable of your name.

Secret scaffolding erecting
tier upon tier

emerging beauty of my life.

Rush-stream of memories
concealed in the bush as the
morning fires die,

the flags are waning in their zest
festoons are withering

ambling along empty streets

yet the story is never done.

Now past drunks at the late station,
past pavements stuck with gum and
roads caressed by wind-swept litter

at the savers, that single pole that
ruminating on the evening spent
I hold every evening in the same
compartment, more or less, past milling
toters asking for spare, the same
crowds, them smelling jackets, clarinet
stations that get empty the same times
muggy glazed nights, as scanty-clad
girls head inward to the city for fun
who must these be, not of us, sure,
Yes, carrying bagfuls that hurt that
by the smelly bin overloaded with
beer cans and assorted junk,

could be a serf working in the farm
a hammer and a sickle later
a shovelboy in a dingy mill,
reading runes by the torch of hope
lighting the hovel by night,

waiting for
the bus that will get me home.

Overcast in mid-monsoon
bursting over ceaseless in rains
whirl-dancing dervishes
petals in ripple lakes,
chiming with the thunder
bridging heaven and Hades
hot a spring steaming here;
When we walk hand in hand
dimpled smile to smile
a hundred voices stream forth
in the bush streaking my cheeks
black unknown the hands of fate;
Flaming a firebrand dagger
dug into the earth will not heal
searing the roots, fuming stamen
in wilting flowers of the flame tree;
Dry the wells after all the tears
to the sky and beyond.
You are free, woman, of all
oppression, by force or love
unfettered be your spirit,
rage over me, dampen the soul!
Frame-holding an angst
disinterested at the edges,
rain, gail, storm in the soul,
withered trail of blossom fall:
spectral here sepulchered.

Surrealist Cut-up

vanishing illuminated darkness
enveloping    into figure              
Faintly       

Figurative-literal**

Fain­tly illuminated figure
vanishing into
enveloping darkness

Love that is pain, the unspeakable
joy of the heart, a transformation

and here in this world cruel of men,
it is to love that is to suffer;

And so when you love with all your heart
with all your soul,  with all your mind
with all your strength,

so is the suffering sweeter the water
deeper the well, dug into the earth
where walked the prophets;

But we can die a hundred times on the cross,
for there is no love that does not heal, and

blessed is this sky under which
such a thing as love blooms;

Risen, we live, when in suffering we die, loving
such is the gospel of love we contemplate tonight.

on this road to the world beyond the  horizons
the years, they unravel, casketed
events rolled like leaves on the trees
flanking the sides:
some, tall, a family of beautiful memories:
put down, now logged and lumbered -
there's a wound that cannot be healed
it's called heartbreak - cyclone that
breaks on our land, ravaging everything
some bent down, broken pride
and leaves, leaves, caskets within caskets:
there, yonder beyond the electric cables,
a moustached village deity astride a horse,
wielding a fearsome machete, under the wide sky:
where we stopped those many years ago
wonder eyed, to capture on our lens,
now passing by nonchalant -
shack where drivers always stopped for tea,
the stream-bend where cows crossed, the restaurant
that we no longer visit- now behind the new lane
the boulevard of green gulmohars blooming late
all rolling back like waves into the sea
it is a year ringing in:
it is years that have been rung out
like pieces in the glass cup-boards,
shell-dolls, them old books, deities put to slumber
of last worshipped, and books, them books, prayer books
mystery books, all untouched for a long long time
it's a quest that's over, past its prime
there rages that debate whether it points
only forward, never backward, but I say
my friends, there is no arrow of time:
only memories - every event, a flower,
plucked from the garden of life,
ever arranged in bouquets or coffins
in the heirloom collections of our reflections

Muggy muggy reflection
them canopies warm certainties
this misty morning, tall
brooding over a ray of light
silences all around, for crickets

splashes a worry, a leaf
reed-song of mourning
against grey-greenery rippled
bright painted gay pink
fuzzy fudged hope emerging
floating fleeting deafening
broken hush of the wood

speaking colours, mute, them
thoughts stuck in the web
confounded, rioting rebelling
colours, shoots, many petals
of a resolving healing love

Half a milken bowl
               stuck on the wall:

sporting a contraption at its head

all silver, this touch-cold cast,

spouting out a colourless stream.

Sound of an outpouring,
the song of life.

parched desert mirage.

haze across the distance
graying horizon
silence deep, as
in anticipation
emerging from the eye
shadows
of some future time
wonder lines
winter morning
wandering mist
flooding the lands
and homes
it will rain, and
more and more
until who knows when
don't flood our home
this time,
no not our dreams

The long shadow of seekers
drenched of mid-day suns
broken scattered
on this land of despair;

Walking nimble
on desiccated human skulls:

A father will not
return from work tonight.
Policeman, armyman, does it
matter, innocent everyman?
A child will be
orphaned and blighted tonight.

Eagles soar in the distance
obscured by fire and smoke
billowing from the assault
on our dreams and hopes.

Paradise -
dreamed of fanatical creeds;
Beyond which
is the graveyard of Gods.

When the mist rose,
fragrant painting the horizon red,
radiant in the evening sun,
emerged of roses a bed;
And we walk on
        hand in hand
                   by a lotus pond
                           in some sapient
                                 distant land.
The chorus of the stars,
hymn
to a limitless vast,
the vistas
that we held in those palms;
Little taps nimble on the roof tiles
the noon-song of the after-rain
drip-dripping sky.
It   was   I    then, and -
you,        as         you       are        now.
Tither have        you       gone hiding?
Waiting at the edge of the platform,
last siren of the day,
dying into the night
rattling in the rails,
echoing in my soul;
Trudge
            now    long
to the aboveground
late bus, hedgewalking
past the cacti
in the garden next door;
flowered, thorn-bushes then
smirks
now the desert rose
crowned King
dew-frozen    of the hour dim

I became island chains
in search of the mainlands;

horizon birds in the morning mist

fires lighting the distant sky

what else

when you smile like that leaning on your arm

I am dragonflies delirious before rain
I am the hummingbirds
I am all the waterlilies

I am going tumbling like the fall stream
drunken peal of the wind chime

gushing, crashing, ambling on

the gulmohars have come dashing down
now the street is crimson eyed

when you smile like that

Yes No Yes No Yes No

Dribble!

No missed passes there.

Yes? Yes. No? (equally, emphatically) Yes!

Cancellation then? Annihilation then?

Sometimes, may be,
all the time, may be,

but, there, subterranean,
somewhere lingering,
sub-zero, a fuzzy something

that we can't make sense of.

invisible, the scaffolding that
erects the edifice of our life.

Yes Yes Yes. Goal!

.

The stillnesses of the aeons before
the world-times which stir in Him adorned of
skulls of all the forms that ever arose,
who knows of what age when first He walked here?
Staff in hand, for who walks His path is but
Him, garlanded in beads native to heights
of the times before time, clad of the ash
burned of tenses, master of dance, in whose
drunken steps rise, these universes vast:
auspicious, three-eyed the Lord of all.

Rain snaps at the distance
one more wet dawn, I sit
longing by the porch,
as the leaves rustle

Of realms ethereal,
Senora, how would I
honour you in my
coarse, this peasant home?

Do not but assume this
frail form, that caprice can
find shelter, human
in you: I can't bear,

I will wait an aeon,
if only to grow eyes.

The air is wet in the moist tears of the sky
vacant, and full of the fragrances of the hill flowers

Lone bird flying tither, looking for shelter.

adorning her forehead dishevelled the clouds
Looking confused, Phantasm woman hair
the early crescent moon  looking lost,

Long travelled, when the soul longs for home,
there is none but the parnaked sky. Some warm clothes
familiar arms, a favourite soup. mirages a thirst.

When all is lost, there is hope. There is soul.
Wide earth, Call upon your vicars,
to learn your language and to be as you are,
to sing with the echoes and vanish with the shepherds.
I come here in homage, find me a home,

staring at the floating lamps dotting the dusk
distant hamlets in salsa with the stars.

Alight, for here, the bus stops.