Closing Hour by Sambhu Ramachandran

There is the darkness trying to reminisce
the simplest lessons of light 
between the owl’s measured screeches. 

From where you lie dressed in stupor,
you hear the faint patter 
of yellow’s baby feet in overworked leaves 

drooping towards the culmination
of all hopefulness. Nobody cares 
if the stars left alive and shining now

are entered in the sky’s Red Data Book.
Only the wind thumbs the pages nonchalantly
to a few pints of rain.

All those fields that once ripened into gold 
stand self-conscious and bald 
in the breeze through the combover 

of shaking wheat while elsewhere
people eat gunpowder for food.
The sea stretches its wrinkled legs

towards the last fire of the moon,
praying for something larger than itself 
to drown its miseries in.

Our shadows easily overgrow the garment
of our bodies, wheels keep on turning,
and thread by silken thread,

the invisible spider weaves our lives 
in which are caught the many dreams 
of our children and those of our grandchildren.