The Ways Of The Mind Poem by chandra thiagarajan

The Ways of the Mind

Against the thorns
Grazing,
To the honeyed rose
The bee flew
A-buzzing!

With the breeze
Swaying
Was the pretty rose-
And at the bee it
Sighed with envy.


"How I wish
I were the bee
Flying so free
And not bound
To the ground
Like the piteous me."

So thought the flower
In its bower.

"How I wish
I were a flower
Cupping the sweet nectar
And bound
To the ground
Without having to fly
All day long."

So sang the bee
By the lea.


From above
The Omniscient smiled
At the strange ways of the mind-
For were not each of them
Now interchanged—
The flower having been the bee
And the bee having been the flower
In their previous birth and longed so!