Dawn’s Carmine-Tinged Cloud Poem by Ananta Madhavan

At dawn, awakening senses
Muddle up moods and tenses;
I am unsure why and how
What was Then is Now.

Distinctions begin to dawn
With sunshine seeping into morn.
All things grow different,
The close-up and the distant.
The far hill is not moist vapour,
Nor the cloud a sheet of paper,
Carmine-tinged in a stack
Of atmospheric layers without track.

A poet saw the sky and imagined
Cloud mass as a rocky continent
And the far hill as an airy monument.

Careful, let me not wonder
If sleep trance has cast asunder
My remembered self, blacked out
My world in mist and Doubt.
I sometimes dread the danger
Of waking up to be a stranger.

That may be luckier
For those who feel pluckier,
But I do not want to lose
The reflex of the truce
That Reason and Season give
To every morning that I live.
So let me learn anew and sense
The joy of difference,
Of details that distinguish
The feeling not to vanquish
Plurality, while fully aware
That perhaps we share
A small part in a cosmic dance,
A Creation Trance.

- - - - - - August 2015. Mysuru