Bibhu Padhi       (Two Poems)               

BEING TOGETHER

 

On a moonless night like this,

scattered islands of stars

take over our dreams,

 

prepare us to find each star—

our children and friends

of a birth or twenty ago,

 

grandparents, the absence

of a home they left behind for our

innocent, loving discovery.

 

We dream of our planet

and parents, our universe,

our cousins in our galaxy.

 

We travel back over

several births to a time

that might’ve gone by us only

 

recently. Just now, maybe.

Now, it seems as though

both sun and moon

 

have risen together to reach

a place of their own, where

a hermit has been sleeping

 

a wakeful sleep, deep within

another sky, a near-heaven.

As if they’ve been hovering

 

over us long enough for us

to imagine a still, and yet

supple, island-time, not far from

 

our little bodies and minds.

 

Finding And Losing

 

This, this finger,

is the place from which

all things start—

 

all thoughts, all shapes

of the thinking mind.

 

Accordingly, I expand

and contract every day,

every moment.

 

No one is here to watch

how each thought

is born, without my consent,

 

indeed beyond those things

my perception

finds as familiar, right.

 

Everything stays.

Nothing moves.

 

And there is only this fear

of being pushed towards

 

a nameless island I quietly left

without being noticed, long ago.

 

And I discover how,

even here, where the sunlit mind

begins to shine once again,  

 

the old things rush into my skin

and bone, heart and mind.

 

I’m alone, and the usual doors

of escape are shut and sealed,

 

as though they  were meant

for somebody else’s life.