Himadri Sen

Himadri-Sen

Letter to My mother 

I will write to you in Spring,
When it paints the marigold-
The colors of the sun.
Jasmine fragrance blends the morning dew .
If you walk on it, you will know -Spring has come.
“Have your Dahlias lived the winter gore?”
The weed has now covered your garden, Mother.
No one waters them anymore.

I will write to you when monsoon rain
Wallows on the tin roof.
The wind whispers at my window panes,
And in distance the beetle trees swing to its tune.
“Does Water filled our yard where paper boats sail?
When the Gouranga rises and floods its shore”
The cobwebs had gathered in your room-
 Mother, I don’t live there anymore.

I will write to you when I am alone on a hill top
And a lonely mist veils the valley below
Among the million stars that rise that night
I couldn’t see your face anymore.
I will travel the mystique woods
And walk the lonely shores
In my laughter and tears.
I will write what I became.
I will write to you and tell you-
“Mother, How happy I am.”
____________________________

Wild Flower

If you should ask, “How  I remember you?”
I would say, “The eyes and her loneliness”.
A sight lost in distant dreams.
Stranger in aloof, tempts in eagerness.

How they talked to me, often-
In the quietness of the night.
Whispers, in my empty room, lingering
And a life spent, since, deciphering.

If you should ask, “Why I sigh?”
I would say, “Things happened”.
And amidst winter’s ruins, a wild flower lies
Unseen & smothered, at the night’s end.

One last, it touched the morning air
A savage fragrance, a juvenile heart ensnared
Of love ancient and feelings anew.
A wild flower once bloomed in you.

____________________________

Wanderlust

Once I was a tree,
In the spring’s forest.

The roots nurtured me earth,
In its blossom, I breathed spring,
The breeze forlorn-
Rustled the leaves,
And to me, it sang-
Lullabies. 

There I dreamt- “Of dawn”.

“The light cascaded down the treetops,
The forest floor covered in mist,
Where she walked, a celestial form,
In Her alluring tone, called for me”
Once I was the spring’s tree.

Once I was a path,

In my wandering longing-
I followed her,
Across the rivers & streams,
And through the narrow lanes
Of villages far.

Veiled in the mud and dust
Deep gorges, sigh!
Along winding roads of Mountains high.

I walked till the grass,
Drenched in dew, stopped stride,
In the fading lights of dusk-
The snow peaks shone,
And with colors of rainbow
She painted the azure sky .

Spellbound, I kneeled and gazed.

Left my footprints unseen, untraced.

Once I was the wanderer’s path.

Once I was a man who sat by the sea,
I listened to her heave and sigh,
In the abyss of my heart, echoes-
Cries of the wave, abrading the rocks.

Like ancient sorrow hard to obliterate.

When in a full moon night
The stars melt in the sea,
Like diamonds of her attire, they shine.

She rises from her sleep.

In Her arms, embraces me
Then my longing subsides.

And once I was the sea.

Setu, April 2019