By: Pramod Rastogi

In Quest of You Since Long

Time has lost its rhythm for me.
Alternating in cycles the days and nights
Announce neither the whispering dawns
Nor denounce the hush of twilight woes.

Leaving time and space to sleep and yawn,
I have taken in this quietude the liberty
To lay bare my mind in languid light
By dusting out its grief and pain
And putting its resilience to test

In readiness for the day of reckoning,
When in silence you will climb out
Of the dew in its mystical nothingness,
And, mesmerized, I will follow behind you
To the land of eternal blessings.

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Life’s Perceptions

Healing rays of the rising sun
Filter through a punch of greenish pink,
And a waft of fragrance fills my spirit
As I walk past bougainvillea in bloom.
Not reputed for prowess unbound
In aroma, neither bougainvillea
Nor the rays of the sun staked
A claim for vanity unowned.

Yet the rays filtering through
Carried a celestial fragrance.
Was this scent an expression
Of the serene state of my mind?
Or was the glow a sensation sublime
Sieving through the pink blooms?
Life is a crossroad of perceptions
Chained to our state of mind.

I add a redeeming ritual to my life
To go to the pond at the village end
In the early morning dawn
For cleansing my state of mind.
If a needle fell in a music-lit hall,
A state cleansed would perceive the fall
As if enthralled by a silent chant,
Though awake would be the decibels.

Hanging around Life’s neck
Is a musical bell of perceptions,
Whose windscreen, rinsed
Of all its weeds of prejudices,
Remains awake in its dormancy,
Sensitive each moment to the invisible
Even driving along, a cratered track
Unmarked and with crossings aplenty.