Trumpeting spring

The pink trumpet trees on either side

Of the road mitigate your winter

Of bare head and conscious breath 

The eyes mist over at the rare blossoms

Heralding spring in soft tones over

The discordant notes of the traffic

The eyes that have seen will carry

The flowers home and place them

In vases that know only artificial flowers

Neither fragrant nor wilting

But offering some quiet to the city-stressed

The neighbourhood konrai is in bloom too

Blazing with its yellow fire next to

The palash yet to light its orange flames

The grandfather points out the new season

To the little one tracking the fleet-footed cat

Time seems to be in no hurry, to light your fire.

Touching rain

The morning grows dark like evening

The clouds gathering from nowhere

Crowd out daylight just like that

It seems you had almost forgotten 

What rain looked like or smelt like 

Or felt like the way

You gazed at it like someone from land

Where it is a rarity and treated like divinity

You had forgotten what it is to feel holy

What sacred looks like and only revering 

Lifeless idols made holy by touchy priests

Who pretend to be holier than your god

To watch and stretch your hand out for

A cup of cloud, sky, sea and wind is

To partake of a time you can't keep.

April

It's April and the bodhi tree

Is in leaf, the old quietly leaving

For the new to arrive, with many

Branches still looking bare and even

The regular crows roosting there 

Keeping away in the mid-day sun;

You keep checking every day to see

The green leaves peeping out 

And growing larger and greener 

With the sheen more brilliant by the hour

The boys flying kites sometimes find 

Their first few flights of the season

Crashing here irretrievably as lost time ---

The drama of death and resurrection 

Enacted every year before your eyes

Is strangely reassuring as your steps falter

And you foresee your own time stopping.