RENDEZVOUS

poems no longer emerge
out of some verdant soil
like lilies reflexively
spreading their pink cheer

they don’t happen as they did
twisting out of a gnawing gut…
glow worms on the screen
shedding light in dark corners

words tapping themselves out
of their own accord
have lost their easy fluidity
stanched like blood from a wound

they want me to listen keenly
to the silence…to a stillness
behind their din…you and I will meet
in that space beyond words…

Caterpillars to Butterflies

each time I visit the complex
their forever beaming faces
send out a message that’s clear

they whisk up fruity passions
and add the sheen of imagination
to those steaming cauldrons they stir

tie dreams in the fabrics they dye
and glue grins to paper products
with the sheer rapture of living

sow beauty in the beds they tend
belief in the classes they attend
knead verve into the stuff they bake

content to repay society
silence stapled to their lips
they personify the joy of being

a delight we ‘normal’ humans
seem to have forfeited forever
in the way we knot up our lives

(Employees, the backbone, of Srishti, Munnar.)