I made those paper boats to sail
Folded by hands eagerly  
Then floated them in streams of rain
Now, they come to float in memories

A splash of toes in puddles of mud
As heaven's water washed the eyes
A song on lips of clouds and rain
As I raised my arms to hug the skies

So free and wild those days of yore
Such innocence in  breath of dawn
Laughter lingered through the  night
Oh, how quickly have those days all gone

And stories that grandmother told
Weaves and yarns that life unmasked
Now come back to me in dreams that drift
Like paper boats of the past

Heavy chested I breathe
as the moon whitewashes the night.

The season is changing
and in the wind is the vapor of hyacinth
in the thick of which
the glowworms drink the nectar of night.

They have no philosophy and I have many
like while they dance just for the sake of life
my mind enveloped in obscurity
has shackled my feet and clipped my wings.

I wonder if the glowworms have a mind
that knows when they dance
they have an audience.

Maybe the stars know the same way
when they twinkle.

‘What a piece of work is a man!’
………           ………
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust’

From Shakespeare, through Hamlet
It rings down to generations
And falls heavily on my ears too
In vain, I attempt to probe into the mystery
Nay, the enigma called man
Both in the silence of my solitude
And in the learned circle of pundits

(Fool…..
Unable to find who you are
Can you venture to say who the other man is?)

Man is a jumble of contradictions,
I know….A hard nut to crack!
So unfathomable, so mysterious
At once a Satan and an angel

To the outer world I am someone
But in the well guarded cellars of my privacy
Aren’t I different?
Hiding my innards to light
As every other man

At times, I feel so proud
Excessively in love with my own image
Like Narcissus, the poor hunter boy
Fated by gods to languish
On the bank of a pond,
Over his own floating image!

However with all my strength within
Do I not feel as helpless as Prometheus bound?
Waiting for a Hercules to come
And save me from my plight
If Prometheus’ ******* was God willed
Mine is self willed…! Is the difference so very crucial?

Sometimes I feel I am Janus
Looking backward and forward
Into my past and my future
Never living in the present
Or am I more a Sisyphus
Eternally rolling a rock over to the hill
From where it keeps falling down

Sometimes I wonder
Amid the splendor, do I not starve?
Like Tantalus of Greece in the pool
Beneath the tree, with the low lying branches of fruits
Constantly eluding his grasp
And the water, ever receding before
He could take a drink!

As a poet how I wish I could
Equate myself with Calliope
Carving my mind on the wax tablet
With stylus, my pen and coloring it with my fancy
Or Orpheus, so skilled in music
That with my sad musings
I can make even Hades weep
And the rocks fall in line

I shudder to be a Medusa
Turning everyone to a stone
With my sinister glance!
Instead, I want to be one of the Graces
And never one among the Gorgons

Pitched in this gallery
Of queer mythological entities
I wonder how I appear to others
And whom I resemble more!

Autumn, like an Indian classical dancer, dressed up
Arrives with soft rhymes and quickening steps
She comes aglow, aglow with a rare beauty
Dancing to the bracelet's tinkling song
Her floating robe falls in deep folds around her feet
As she mesmerizes all with moves full of grace
Viewing the flaming colours in assorted display
We are apt to wonder if Nature carefully saved up
All that is best for the closing grand finale
Autumn tints look enchanting all through the land
With pervading green, offset by crimson, citrus yellow
Flaming red, lustrous gold and a faded russet
The air stays crisp and sweet in the ripening fields
While stray clouds ramble in flawless turquoise sky

When autumn is thus all agog like a frenzied dervish
It gives us morbid pictures of death and decay
The trees wrestle to free themselves of their worn cloaks
Causing a cascade of withering autumn leaves
Now they fall scattered in endless stream and lie in piles
Like charred carcasses after a fierce forest fire
The rustle of dry leaves blown by the wind
Falls in our ears with the gabble of migrating birds
Pale sunshine sifts through leafless trees of maple and oak
All those leaves once stayed regal in stations high
But now tossed out like worthless chaff
They come nose diving and fall several meters below
Spreading a hazel curtain over the moist earthen crust
When trampled mercilessly by careless feet
They silently mourn their thankless fate

Graying that comes at the end of each autumnal fall
Reminds us of the pall of gloom that awaits
It is disturbing like the parting song of birds
As they fly southward before the fall of winter