Long ago from now,
As in many a fables we were told,
There lived a man not so old; and gone,
Who cared for me
much before I came to this world.
Though the spaces can never be crossed
I still stretch myself often
Sitting sedate on my cozy couch
To touch those hands and fingers
Of that man who carried many burdens for me
Like a friendly ghost, like a guardian angel,
Long before I came to this world.
At times I look in to his eyes
Not so very lively, in an old portrait
That hangs in a corner of my room,
Yet I feel his visions still brighten my eyes
And lighten the paths I need to tread.
Many a times he pulls me
Out of my own dirt,
To show me the seeds of saneness within
And sprinkle water on my sleeping wisdom
from a distance beyond words and reason.
The likeness I share I wonder,
Even an old picture can’t hide.
The nature has played its potions
to the right proportions
And saved it for me to mirror,
A puzzle we cannot fathom.
Often in my childhood I used to hear
My grandma speak of him and his fears,
in words to me were unclear, though
she promised I would see him clearly
Once the seasons mellows me in time.
He left her quite early, in his early thirties
When my mother was around two,
Struggling to make a meaning
Of all that was novel and new;
and all the pockets of her memory still can’t empty,
any fragments of his sight or sound.
Nature had taken me through the years,
many pathways smooth, no potholes
no steep hills or sudden cliffs.
And on the plains of my uncertain mellowness,
Like the prophecies of a fortune-teller
that can come true in random
I hear my grandma’s words again and again.
and evermore and I can see him clearly now,
The man who cared for me
Long before I ever came to this world.