Things

In the dream there is nothing
Around me but the things that 
I coveted and couldn't keep
As I grew up
And hardly remembered ---
There's the new cricket bat
I kept under my pillow
The shoes I slept with
The three pictures
Of deities I no longer petition
Having seen the futility of desires ---
My late sister's framed painting
Of a peacock by a waterfall
I broke, is there too
The glass still cracked
How fragile we all are.

Thicker than water

Did you know that
All that we have lost
We can find in our dreams
Things, places or persons ---
The breeze that blows
The distant song away
Also brings it back
Half-heard is as heart-wrenching
As memory fills the words
We know by heart
Dreams bring back those
Who left without a word
They do not say
Where they have been
Or what they have seen
As if they are still afraid
Of those who slew them
Father, brothers and uncle
Who still think blood
Should not mix
And a woman cannot choose.

Wandering

And then he was often in dreamland
Where the trees sifted light
As with a sieve, kept the day like night
The lines between shifting forever
The dead and living crossing over at will
With no way to tell what time it was
Only that it looked like dawn or dusk
With the birds either rising or roosting
The old man was in a panic ----
Could not find his friend's daughter
Visiting the city for a job interview
'I asked her to wait here
Did anyone see her?'
Everyone around knew 
He was wandering now
Signaled to the auto he had caught
To go in search of the missing girl,
The  driver gave him a joy ride
Then dropped him off at his doorstep
He cheerfully entered his house
Demanding a strong coffee
The dreamland hardly remembered.