1
In petrified personal history
far back in a page, this image-
a boy, eyes shut
lays supine embraced by
mother earth.A wakeful dream.
His bare body, smells
sweat, hay, mud, pollen
and grasshopper songs,
resonating in his ears still,
the sacred morning mantras;
his Hindu mother's incessant chants-
to appease mother earth.
* Shanthi..Shanthi..Shanthi
Peace descends on magical wings.
2
He feels time standing still
like trees frozen on a windless morn,
Earth was the mother, the presence,
that poured in to consciousness
music without sound,
an warm embrace without touch,
that painted the inner world with
her myriad colors.
3
Earth where secrets spurt, spread and die down as ashes,
my windy bed, gentle balm, end of every hunger,
I've dug deep in to yielding earth,
on those days of rustic childhood,
in a frenzied exploratory spirit,
prompted by a deep primordial urge,
that kept churning my dark inner caves,
with unknown currents, perhaps a wish
to go back as far as possible,
to the past and find the nest where memories slept,
where my history lay buried in layers,
unhatched eggs of dinosaur past,
waiting to be discovered,
by the probing hands of present and future.
Perhaps a desire to reconnect with past,
now crusted secrets of an uncertain time,
that would talk to me in cryptic codes
of life, death and transcidence
and in a flash reveal what it all means
to an intergalactic traveler on eternity's wings.
4
My eager body gets smeared with soft earth,
covered at places with sticky mud that exudes
a sensuous scent,
feel of a woman, that takes one
to the unreal plane of a savage urge,
that arises from depth, a yearning to melt in to her,
to give birth to a future that would bring back
in a new form, the histories of yore,
on the starting point once again.
5
Earth, is the sensuous woman, I relentlessly seek,
the destination of my destiny in the end,
the womb, where seeds of my dreams take root,
when I come back to her, to create me all over again,
with her elements, minerals and salts.
* Shanthi-Peace, chanted repeatedly at the end of Mantras