If you look long enough
into this magic tree
that’s taken root outside my window
here’s what you will see –
a lattice of leaves
transform mid-morning
into starry sky….
Street sounds,
motorcar horns
become
the musical clip-clop
of a horse…
cruel smoke and smog
filter through
as shape-shifting stardust…
and tears charmed
right out of my eyes
to become
drops of dew, drops of rain
on the leaves’ undersides…
Categories: beauty · dreams · language · life · nature · poem · thoughts · tree · words · writing
Astronomers, scientists
and all other rationalists
have ruined
celestial love!
By calling it ‘occultation’
and observing it
with telescopes
and other instruments
that measure distances
between the two lovers
– Moon and Venus
they were, last night
drawing close
in slow seduction
until she lay
beneath him, above him
tongues and limbs intertwined
united in love…
Watch, if you will
but with love
and respect
for a sacred amour
Be a voyeur, if you will
But please,
not a data-notching scientist!
Categories: beauty · language · life · love · nature · poem · thoughts · words · writing
Every moment life
also dies
And begins
itself anew…
In this way
we dance…
ever dead
ever new!
Yesterday I heard the song of the humpback whale. It really was musical! In the sense that we human beings understand. It had a particular rhythm and harmony, and there was definitely some conveying of feelings in those series and phrases in whale voice.
Listening to the sounds made by these awesome creatures drew me deep underwater, surrounded by miles and miles of ocean. A primeval dawn, a raw interconnectedness. The beginning of evolution when a flaming earth forces all life undersea. A time rich in potential, when everything is newborn or unborn.
The whales sing to each other, conveying who knows what? Scientists as usual try and reduce everything to survival needs. Oh, it is a mating song, they say. Then, when faced with female whales’ indifference to it, it is identified as some sort of exchange of information between male whales.
Why, I ask. Why cannot it be a way of creating, enabling, inducing, sharing beauty? Why do human beings think beauty and art and intelligence are their sole preserves, and that every other creature, whether it is whales singing or dolphins playing or birds lining their nests with flowers, must do so out of some compulsion to survive, win in the rat race as it were? It is indeed the tyranny of humanity, the apex of anthropomorphism.
In all of this, when humanity’s progress has all but destroyed the earth and its delicate life-networks, I throw in my lot with the whales. Something tells me they’ll be singing into the oceanic dusk long after all of us have vanished in a mushroom cloud. Or a heat haze. Something or the other. We are good at that. Creative, even. Hey, give me the whales’ creativity any day.
Categories: climate change · environment · life · music · song · thoughts
Gold and green
sweet and sharp
wilful, aromatic
what is that?
mango…
Cooked or crushed
what flavours
chutneys, pickles and sweets
of which fruit
do I speak?
mango…
Whose tart taste
spiced childhood dreams
whose tang
lives in tastebuds
and in memories
that itch
under skin?
mango…
What is revered with
a million names
what nourishes souls
unravels conundrums
gives it all?
No, not god…
Mango!
Categories: food · life · mango · nature · poem · thoughts · words · writing
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