Pranab Ghosh (Women and Spring)

Pranab Ghosh

Pray, don't prey on me!

 

The cloudy sky brings with it a sense of loss, a nostalgia of sorts that makes you sigh! You know the reason, yet you pretend not to know it and put up a brave face, instead. Memories however, keeps tugging at your heart, gnawing your vitality till you murmur to yourself, looking at the picture postcard - depicting a snowy mountain - that has arrived in the last mail, "If winter comes can spring be far behind?". The signed postcard takes you back in time. The initials though...! Yet! You find your mind racing through sunny dreams, wafting in 'dreamflower talced' waves that tosses you up now and down then, but you do not sink!

 

Wretched green lost
I tried to find where
Frozen memories!

 

You stay alone these days, marveling in the wonders of frozen delights - fruits, ready-to-cook vegetable mixes, chicken legs and ice creams of various colors, tastes and shapes! God, cooking is a pain. Washing dishes and clothes only add to your sufferings, but you endure... !

 

A message written
The postman is too lazy
What expectation!

 

I know you are both a dreamer and doer! The dear isn't a dead breed, I know that! Tigers are required to preserve the balance in ecosystem, I know that too! But can we not exclude the tigers from this sequence,

 

only if it is for a brief while? Come on it's spring time now!

 

Author's bio: Pranab Ghosh is an award-winning journalist, poet and author. His poems and prose piece have been anthologised in various Indian and international magazines including, Indian Literature, Dissident Voice, Piker Press, Memoryhouse, Setu, Impspired.com etc.. Two of his books of poems - Karma Cola (Impspired.com, UK) and Love, Religion & Politics (Virasat, India) - was published last year (2023). At present he lives in Kolkata, India.

 

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Setu, March 2024