By Pramod Rastogi

Eternal Echoes of Time

Money may buy much,
But never the moments it cannot reclaim.
Time moves in one direction only,
Bearing me on its unbroken tide,
A passage both merciless and profound.

O passing breeze, why should I grieve
For missing your fleeting dance?
The past asks no audience.
Joys and sorrows turn alike,
Markers along Time’s winding path
Across the deep oceans of our lives.

The sages call Time a magician,
A healer of its own wounds,
Mending what it first unsettles
Along a course no hand can read.

Time is wise.
It leaves us echoes of experience,
Vivid and unforgotten,
Guiding us through the noise
Toward steadier ground.
So why mourn the moments
That have already carried me onward?

Time keeps its rhythm,
And so does my life,
A growing quiet trailing in its wake,
Approaching the edge of its mystery.

One day I will bow out of this world.
Beside me, a final droplet of time remains,
A fragment briefly freed
Between the fleeting and the eternal.

Time itself endures,
Woven into the fabric of forever,
Unbroken, resisting all forces
That would still its motion.

What lies ahead, I cannot know.
Perhaps another dawn, another form,
Or the soul loosening itself
Into eternity’s vast embrace.

Time moves on, missing nothing,
Until its last note sounds,
A quiet salute
To all it has carried.

Life in Shades

Life is a bouquet of colors and hues,
Each tint unfolding into another.
A man is white, or brown, or black,
Not as absolutes, but as shifting light.
A rose blooms beyond a single name,
Each petal holding its own quiet variance.

Pain arrives with a child’s first cry,
Already fractured into degrees.
Illness shadows the long walk of life,
Its wounds deepening and fading in turn.
Toil etches itself upon the brow,
Leaving traces no mirror can erase.

Passions rise and fall like tides.
At their crest, they dazzle and blind.
In retreat, they temper and redeem.
Emotions move in their own currents,
Where heights proclaim and depths restore
What excess once had stripped away.

Life is an orchestra whose opening note,
A raw shriek, announces breath.
It unfolds in movements of sorrow and joy,
Softening as the end draws near,
Until silence gathers its final force
And the soul loosens into light.