Writing of a poem
Oh! How it can be likened
To having a baby!

With the copulation of fancy and thought,
Comes the moment of conception

      It can happen any day
      Unanticipated or planned erstwhile
On a star studded night
Or a rain drenched morn
It swims into you as a seed
So tiny… so inconspicuous
Once the pregnancy confirmed
Comes irritation, nausea
Lethargy and loss of appetite
Your stomach rarely growls for food
Clouds of words hang heavy and low,
Refusing to break into showers
They don’t gush or rush.
Ideas dry up leaving the nib parched
Lines crack n’ break
Depression follows
Discouraged, you feel fatigued

But all the while you begin to realize
That a new life
Independent of you
Has begun growing inside you
Then all the care taken
To foster the young life

You read…
You refer the lexicon
You withdraw from other works
Take rest, relax in solitude

Slowly the foetus moves
The first stirring of life!
With fond fingers, as you pat your belly
Your pen pats the paper
The first line…..
The first faint beating of the heart!
Then words….
Like little harness bells tingling
Fall in line, line after line!

Drawing nourishment from you,
The embryo grows limb by limb
The miniscule of insight
Grown after months of waiting
Into a mature body of illumination!
A stretch of your dreams!
A suffusion of light!

After the labor pains
Of scribbling and scrawling,
Writing and rewriting,
Deleting, adding and editing,
With time stretching and contracting,
A baby, no, a poem is born.

Whether cute or ugly
No mother can dislike it
She marvels at its birth
Wraps it in her warmth
She must have had in mind a name
Or seeks to find a name;
An apt name

Thus a poem with a title is born!
She wonders if her baby would lit a smile,
On others lips too
Or from them would flow,
Words of endearment as from a trickle!