The beauty lies in a single flower.
In the stars that awaken at night.
The beauty lies in the raw power
Of a bird taking flight.

How I long to behold that beauty,
To grasp it close and tight.
To feel its warmth and let it truly
Overcome my might.

I will watch as time goes by
And the life inside me dies,
I will smile as I watch the sky.
Beauty never says goodbye.

gently bid the night  goodbye
it nourishes no more
the unblinking stare of the stars
no match for my candlelight
wakefulness is more coveted
as everyone else dozes
pieces of calm snatched away
from a world that eschews it
in silky silver voice i sing
lullabies to the waves
the sand gets between my toes
soft and grainy roses
the wakefulness that comes now
has white metallic motifs
shimmering away
mother of pearl
lights the road
across the ocean

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
  21.11.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

She’s falling in love with a boy named after a star.
I say, “How poetic.”
She says, “I’m not sure how to love a star.
I’ve never done this before.”

I don’t tell her about the star I spent all of last summer staring at.
The star that glowed so brilliantly
that I forgot about the pain in my neck
from gazing upwards for a whole season.
I forgot that I was in a land of meteor showers.
I convinced myself of a rearranged solar system.

I don’t tell the girl about to jump about the fall.
The Fall when I fell and fell and kept wondering when I would hit the ground.
The winter when I had nowhere else to go and my heart felt
like it was constantly hitting rock bottom and bouncing back up,
only to crash down again with greater force.
People who listen closely enough say they can still hear echoes
of my heart breaking every time I look up to the night sky.

Natalie, she’s always had her head in the clouds.
She swallows zodiac signs without any salt.
She feels safest on the outer edges of the Milky Way.
I don’t want her to think I am afraid of the sky.
I almost show her my scars-
Deep blue nebulae on the bottoms of my feet
from when I tried to run her out of me;
Black holes eclipsing missing memories
from when I tried to smoke her out of me;
Constellations of twisted veins in my hands
from when I tried to write her out of me.
It still isn’t quite working.

But I promise, I’m not afraid of the sky.
I’m just afraid of leaping
into an atmosphere with
too little oxygen or too much gravity.
Everything in moderation, I think to myself.
Stop searching for telescopes
that will kiss your eyelids.
They measure success
in how far away they can get.
Even some of the most intimate cosmic embraces
can start to feel like long-distance light-years
before you ever thought possible.

The best way to see a star
is to look right beside it
and let it soak into your peripheral vision.
Do not let your pupils become too attached to the darkness.

Finally, I sigh and tell her,
“I have no map of the galaxy.
I might have, at one point, been able to draw you one,
but I always leave too soon.
I still can’t sleep since realizing
that stars burn out long before
we ever see their light.”

The dunes are tall,
but, we can still hear the crash.
The smell of salt reminds us,
of treasured frames.
You asked if I remembered,
“yes” I do remember that one.

Flour like sand,
it cradled our feet.
Our palms smacked,
the land.
As we progressed,
to our full stride.

Loops of gold,
surrounded us.
Tickling the laughter out of us,
it echoes beautifully.

In slow romance,
your gaze meets mine.
That is when you turned,
'click' a pose framed,
by my eye.

The shutter captured,
a moment of escape.