Medicine men

Old age is when we get to visit

The doctor more than friends

As conditions get chronic,

The vocabulary gets better

With the medical Latinisms

Picked up at the clinic

The prescriptions make

Much more sense now

As fs and pp we have learnt

Are short for fasting and after food

The quotes hung on the wall

Are so inscribed in the mind

That they appear in lucid dreams

It is a bad sign when specialists

Have to be sounded for diagnosis

The surgeons appear bloodthirsty

Ready to wield the scalpel

Given half a chance and insurance,

Happiness is when the cold disappears

On its own the very next morning

And the good old immunity is back.

Waiting

 The cell phone screen reflects

The tree canopy and the sun

Seen through it before I type this out

Hoping truth will arrive somehow

Without will or desire or effort

The religious songs from a shop

Keep me company as I wait

For the flour miller to appear

At his empty unit swept and silent

Like the medicine men perhaps

He likes his clients to wait

While he finishes his chores

Or maybe his Friday temple ritual

Waiting is what we do well

For something to turn up

When nothing will matter.

Time

The old man on the park bench

Mutters to himself something

He has read or heard somewhere:

It is easier to forget

Than be forgotten;

Time flies when young.

The green peacocks

That cannot fly

Turn red in season;

Time moves in various colours.

The parrots cannot be still or quiet

They screech from tree to tree

Seem always in a hurry;

Time is frenetic around them.

The funeral procession 

Pauses every now and then

To set off serial crackers

What are they celebrating

But the death of time.

Full moon

In the morning there is little trace

Of the night that put you to sleep

And lulled the mind with dreams

The slant shadows the sun causes

Trail you till they subside in darkness

Fear of transience darkens pleasure 

Every morsel has the shadow of the past

When hunger was a feared beast

The flames of the sacrificial fire

Cry for more than ghee and grain

They have tasted sacred flesh before 

To the invocations of the war god

The ones who wanted to enter portals

Not meant for everyone have perished

In fiery ways celebrated as divine union

Let the full moon bloom in every dark sky

Make everyone look up, learn to ask why.