The man who cared

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.