ON THE LAP OF KILIMANJARO

                                                           S.J.SANGEETHA

Beneath the pall of Kilimanjaro’s might,
A tale unfolds in masks of day and night.
The swollen clouds, with cyclones bold,
Drizzle tales of life, yet death they hold.

Rivers spring from the glacier’s spirit,
Threads of silver, life’s purest fine art.
Yet whispers of tribes in shadows breed,
In their psalm, the mountain’s cryptic drift.

A girl of charm, Miona, her name,
With eyes like stars, a dancing flame.
Her mirth danced like streams below,
Yet her heart bore secrets no man could see.

Two men wanted her love, robust and true,
One a warrior, heart as morning dew,
The other, a vagrant with reveries untold,
Each craving  her heart’s depths to reveal.

Tiago, the warrior, stood firm and proud,
His voice alike rumble in the swollen cloud.
But Kioni, the dreamer, sang with the waft,
A descant soft that set hearts at comfort.

The triangle twirled beneath the sky’s ire,
As Kilimanjaro watched with arctic fire.
Miona’s heart, torn by love’s vicious hand,
Yet fate tattered the threads they’d designed.

One squally night, the mountain awoke,
With snarling winds and skies that bust.
Tiago and Kioni,  in fury and cacophony,
Mounted to her refuge, where clouds abridged

At the glacier’s edge, realities were laid austere,
Miona discovered  her soul’s anguish:
“I am of the mountain, its breath and melody,
To choose but one would be solely wrong.”

She dove, not to fall, but to upsurge,
Her form melted in the stormy skies.
The mountain embraced her, its perpetual bride,
Leaving the men to mourn by its side.

Now Kilimanjaro attires her face,
In each shadowed cranny, her numinous grace.
Its glaciers whisper of love so intense,
And the hearts it broke beneath its summit.

Life springs tranquil from its icy veins,
Yet death shows vast in its torrent reigns.
The mountain watches, eternal and majestic,
Its secrecies etched by nature’s hand.

For Miona, the harbinger of peace and conflict,
Is both water’s love and the scalpel of life.