River

I want to see my river

Be a river again 

Stand on its north bank

Watch it flow past me

With the temple towers

Watching me from the south

I want to just watch it

Without the myths, 

Without the words

Without the past

Without the future

Watch myself being swept away.

The mind is not old

When the feet turn unwilling

You can talk all you want

But cannot make them walk

Like they used to and take you

Wherever you want them to go

You remind them of the trek

In the pathless hills cliimbing

Through shrub and rock racing

With those taking the beaten path

Were these the same feet now

Unable to shuffle to the nearest shop?

The mind remembers the early morning

Dip in the Ganga in the coldest month

The body shivers now though swathed

In thick sweaters and shawls in a city

That is considered warm by the young

Even during its yearly cyclonic weather

The mind refuses to grow old even when

The eyes see the world through a haze

As silhouettes and shapes and shadows.

Nature

Hunger is the clock we live by

Its chimes we cannot ignore

Sensuality is a secret pleasure

We cannot tell the world

Where does this sense of exile

Come from when we have no home

To go back to or recall with love?

We cannot take refuge in Nature

As it too turns the rooted to refugees

All of us are migrants from somewhere

Like birds, fleeing winters or worse

But we cannot go back like them,

It is good to know the sun will burn out

And even the earth we cannot call home.

Wordlessly

Tired of the television chatter on

Low pressure, troughs, depression

Upper air circulation, wind speeds

Flooding of roads, traffic snarls

Disruption of routine, unplanned infra

Explosion of population, party politics

I switch it off to go watch the rain fall

Wordlessly ravishing, like an act of mercy.