Every time I’m happy, for reasons I don’t know,
Lights flash in my heart and it kind of . . . . discos.

Why not a waltz, polka, salsa, jive, tango or calypso?
Of all dances, I am not sure why it chooses to disco.

Perhaps, it’s a dance that it can dance on it’s own,
A dance in merry solitude when I might be alone.

Maybe, I grew up in the time when Saturday Night Fever was in tow,
When pop charts went tizzy with songs that’d make the world boom-boom go.

Maybe, my heart beats to the rhythm of life, at times funky, at times slow,
Maybe, it’s in tune with electronic sounds around me — that in a humdrum, flow.

The top left chamber of my heart, leaps, jumps and thumps so,
The bottom right chamber shakes a leg to a psychedelic-lights-show.
My arteries and ventricles throb and pulsate oh . . . OH!
Pumping blood in a sudden rush all the way to my toes.

And like the ever-glittering disco ball, I spin, shine and glow,
Every time I’m happy, my heart jumps . . . And a-dancing it goes

The bakula and the madhumalti
Sway in the warm wind
Watching children play
In stained shirts
With mud-filled nails
Bare feet and beady drops of laughter
Unmindful of the heat
While a dog playfully rolls over
Trying to catch the sunlight
That falls through the trees

A white-eye flies low,
resting on the firangipani tree
Butterflies dance around the hibiscus
And bees swarm
Hedges have blossomed with flowers

And the mynah calls from outside—
To awaken the forgotten child in an older heart
And tell her that summer reigns

You say you’re a petal
soft, free, and light
not the tree to lean on
in the depth of my night

but I never asked
for a trunk or a tower
just the grace of your heart
& the pull of your power

you call me the flower
but oh I only grew
’cause I had the sun
of being near you

so go where you need
drift with the breeze
find all your truths
and plant your own peace

& if ever the wind
brings you back to my door
I’ll still be the bloom
that you first rooted for.