Through The Kohled Eyes

To be in this moment is to breathe deep the piquant sun, to have the summer air astir with the flight of butterflies, bulbuls and sunbirds gently wash over...and to be led by the vagrant fragrance of wild mogras and  lantanas. Today eyes do not search anything : not stray feathers, nor kumquats or cowpea blossoms. Today they walk along silently, poised in restfulness. A rufus treepie calls...a crow pheasant answers. Leaves twirl, falter, get trapped in spider webs and so sway a bit longer before falling to the ground.

1. 

cascading shadows 
laugh, tickle the wind 
as it washes over them
whispering who knows 
what, but the birds might-
butterflies inebriated 
with light seek nectar
from pulsating darkness 
of summer blossoms


2.

an owl splinters the evening 
with its silent flight into a
million shards of soundless
sounds, red moon rises spilling 
gold onto the darkling folds of 
the slouching twilight;  Vesper 
pale and alone moves westward
leaving in its wake a flash of
silver, a shooting star, crickets 
jingling, fireflies twinkling...
did I make a wish? 
did i dance the music? 
did I hum the dance? did you?

Comments

Sofie said…
This is again so beautiful to read and to dive deep into your world of observation and emotion. Thanks a lot for sharing your work! With love from Ghent, Belgium. S.
May 18, 2024 at 12:03 PM
Anonymous said…
This reads like poetry in motion. Brilliant.
May 18, 2024 at 1:42 PM
Kamalini said…
so so ripe with a myriad songs, romance & nature. Utterly alive.
May 25, 2024 at 11:02 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

C'est La Vie...Really?

Seven peacocks sit on the parapet of our terrace fronting the bay. A murder of crows spearing into the morning silence flies past chasing a hungry Brahminy kite who desires absolutely nothing but a clutch of eggs for breakfast.  The jails in the country are packed with sloganeering opposition leaders, journalists, activists, and to use everyone's favorite term, 'pseudo-intellectuals'. As elections draw near, the dire need to quash all competition has arisen  within the alpha party.  More than six months on, the war wages on in  the Holy Land. Yet, the country responsible for it, stands fifth on the World happiness index! According to the United Nations, more than a million people are likely to suffer from starvation in the war-torn region since aid is not being able  to reach the affected populace because of innumerable road blocks.  It rained last night. An out of season shower, which brought the peacocks out of the coconut grove. The cashew tree now laden with fruits, spa
Read more

Beyond dreams and awakenings

How to sift reality from non-reality? Pry dreams from fiction?  Our daily constitutional. In an inadvertent raising of the eyes, rust orange of a crow-pheasant in flight caught and released by the irises...scales of a snake dangling from its beak wring the air silver, merciless.   Further up, on a path crisscrossed by the trembling shadows of coconut trees, an explosion. Anvil hammers away on frail eardrums. Something bounces off the ground, grazes past the right foot: a humongous coconut. Mumsy is unperturbed. "They never fall on people," she reassures me, adding sweetly, "for they have eyes". She points them out to me. I pick up the deadly fruit and shake it: the sound of ambrosial water splashes therein. There is a triumphant smile on mumsy's face, "It is a good one," she exclaims. I am still fazed by this close encounter.  "How many people die from coconut falling on their head" I google. According to a British Travel Insurance Company, c
Read more

Summer Blues

Image
the cashew carrier It is difficult to respond to a long spell of tropical summer with anticipation or with memorable fondness. Clammy, humid, clinging and breathlessly hot, it ushers in an oppressive lusciousness and fructification. Neem, mango, cashew, rose apple, kumquat, all flowering and fruiting trees conspire to blossom, bear, and mature at once. A life of ontogeny and everything it encompasses such as fruit-flies, caterpillars, termite over-rush, and scorpion ants is not something we romanticize; we deal with it. As we do with the incessant two-note song of the koïl, sweet yet monotonous in its execution. Through the endless summers  dappled with our prayers for rains, for respite from heat and dust, peacocks strut down the winding path trumpeting, sounding and beckoning the clouds...I sense their yearnings.  Every few hours I haul myself to the yard to pick up the fallen cashew fruits, soft and swollen with juice. Sometimes only a spatter of overripe fleshiness is found, its fi
Read more