Following You.... Poem by Seema joglekar

While you go abroad on a journey of penitence, everything seems to follow you to the distant land.
The mellow sun steps off the horizon into the celestial world, her veil drags behind in crimsons and deep red trails of despair, studded with a few rhinestones of early stars like betraying tears.
A flock of geese follow along in their V-shaped victory path triumphant and euphoric at the sound of their wings.
The clouds and their shadows rush with their outstretched arms, clinging to the feet of hurrying light, refuting the call of the hills.
Winks of lightning brush and shy away at the far end of some distant downpour and follow.
The whistling wind too belligerent at being left behind shrieks a stream of profanities at the hills holding it back.
The slender creeper in blossoms in the backyard has also taken off on a flight of fancy daunting the skies.
But I can follow you only in the clarity of my dreams.
What travel bug has gripped you with the lure of the foaming shores?
What strange mumbo jumbo have you read in the drifting array of stars?
What restless waters bob a message in the bottle with the yonder beckoning to you?
The day ends like a torn petal on a ruthless thorn simply of no consequence, scorched by the sun even before it was offered.
Here my moonless night gets lengthened as many reasons are read in your absence. The sky too seems shocked at the blackness reflected in its depths. Only the humming of my songs keeps it at bay.
I send my words to fill the silence trailing behind you. Only the silence has returned to say it is the intensity of your love that packs you on this journey, while the words have stayed back to linger over your spent thoughts.
How and when did the days of our birth come to stand between us?
Or is it that you go far away just to come very near me?
Cause on these days the little droplets we trade merely hastens the pangs when even the whole ocean may not suffice. Their worth being more important to us than the half-hearted company that we share.
The sun, the geese, the clouds do return after their game of hide and seek more yearning than usual.
You only go so that my arms may open a little wider to receive you when you return.

Seema
6th November-14