The lake shimmered through the shanty on its edge with a woman sitting like a tree. There was foam in her mouth cleansing the night. The sun shimmered beyond her on the lake, like the glint in a child’s eye. The shadows played on the tree softly from the trees on the edge.
This side there are houses everywhere in lake spaces.People in place of water.and in place of rocks. It is as if lakes and rocks have turned people. People who have made holes for themselves like birds in treetops.They have put up flags in their balconies of red-and-white sarees for drying.
The aggregate of their holes makes up the lost lake space. The lake water is nowhere. It has entered their bird bodies occupying holes in vertical space. The rocks are now rubble. And gravel laid out for people who come down from their holes to bring milk for their kids and for their morning coffee and newspapers.
The grass connects your body through toes wiggling to life in a black muddiness imparted by grass water. Cut grass turns tiny whorls of hair knotting around your thumb as if they were the hair of middle aged spinsters thrown out of the window in afternoon combing.
Back in home of childhood, boy roams the morning looking down for abandoned currency notes in the grass. On the off-chance that such abandoned currency notes fly from pockets and settle down in the spaces of grass leaves. Actually there is gap between off-chance and on-chance and never the twain shall meet. This childhood boy knew but did not like to know. He did not like to know that miracles did not happen. Boy of childhood did not care for hair whorls that smelled of coconut oil. Boy of old age recalled hair whorls on wiggling toes and felt they were coming back to life as grass whorls out of yesterday’s cut grass of mower.
The laburnum felt hurt on its bark when someone cut its bark without regard for its feelings. I applied a gentle imaginary balm on its wound. The tree shed imaginary tears and hugged me in my thought. The wound brought us closer to each other, each with own wounds. Its wound made me angrier than mine own. I felt picking up a hatchet and run after the villain who did this. But I did not have a hatchet. I have buried them all earlier.
In the morning I saw tall towers of white plastic chairs stacked on the park grass like they were Stonehenge.There had been a public meeting in the park the day before. Hence Stonehenge.
A bunch of ladies occupied my grass for a new yoga class of ladies. The ladies were persuading others in the park to go their yoga way. A movement, they say is spreading across the country towards fitness. Is going barefoot on dew grass fitness? Of course not, but where do I get my grass thoughts from?
If you have grass you have Stonehenge. Consider walking through stacks of plastic chairs as if they were history’s rocks. I wish I could capture the figures of the yoga ladies against the rising sun. But I can’t do so because I have to take their permission.But I need not take the permission of the sun and nothing prevents me from capturing him over their figures. Still, it is not polite. Besides,they were not all that poetry. Sun of course is poetry with or without exercising ladies.
The tree I pat on every day is a laburnum. I hadn’t noticed this till I raised my head and looked into its eyes. I saw a new bunch of yellow flowers like a beehive hanging from a sparsely leaved tree. The leaves were not many and the flowers simply burst in splendor against a blue sky. Their plenitude was as if they were the leaves and the leaves were flowers.Yellow leaves and green flowers.The way they overran the leaves. In my last picture there were dogs under the laburnum. In it the dogs sat unmindful of the new flowers.
The Word Wild Life lady is telling on the television to save power.The fiery lady who had recently lost her man to the stars. He died pointing the brightest stars of this season to daughter. Our own earth hour is here. The lights will go off promptly. Remember, our earth hours are not many.
Yesterday was the birthday of a friend who had died a year ago but his Facebook pretends to be celebrating his birthday. I too have celebrated it , not with a happy birthday wish but with just remembering. I pretend he is still around. He may not be playing Farmville and pestering others to join. But for me he is still on the other side of the cyber space. An open-ended presence in space-time. Actually it suits me to believe he exists somewhere. Especially it is my turn now to be dead in Facebook, being only a year older than him.
When I had returned from a girl’s death a few days ago I saw another Facebook account missing from Lousiana. His Facebook ,complete with pages and groups is missing. Look what happens behind one’s back. These days you cannot be away from the Facebook even for one day. Now ,all I see is a Facebook stub managed by sons who have already changed his going to an event.
In the grass again its blades are familiar to the foot, soft on the underside and gently yielding. They provoke thought in words carelessly thought, but leading to essential meaning.
A man in the bench is drowned in words, words that issued from his lips flowing from a newspaper. Newspaper drowned him in words,his pants reeling under the tyranny of its middle spread. Papers spoke through his lips. Of people dead, of roads not being repaired, of men in topis changing flags.Of bad people who deserved to be jailed.
The bare armed man doing nostril noises is missing. His 70’s song about the girl in the car not knowing where the rouge on her cheeks has come from is not gently floating in the wind today .
Not the girl but the song-I can be confusing to myself in my syntax,can’t I? .
That is what happens if the grass is not adequately be-dewed.The dew is now in the word making segment of the left hemisphere.
The other man doing a midriff revolution near the tree is quietly sitting on the bench. He is not even throwing his arms about in the wind.
The cricket near the tree root seems missing. I just pat the tree affectionately and come away.
The cricket had fallen silent for two days near the park trees. I now hear it back again, this time like the creaking of a tree wood in the wind. On the passing tree I see a big black ant making its appearance for the first time.In the next rounds of walk I look for it. Actually look for it ,till it became an obsession with my eyes, heavy with uveitis, an inflammation of the middle eye. The ant looked like having the powers to control my pain center.
Back home I keep looking for music to soothe my eye heavy with uveitis. A song about a bird in the sky may soothe pain. Then everything looked whirring as I got up from the computer. Like a bird swirling in the sky. I need words to keep me steady in the sky. From floating away. From fear of not seeing. Towards beauty and music.