The window pane

How frail and brittle everything looks
Through the little window pane, 
The glass that glosses over, yet it never takes the pain
The cracks that crackle in circles;
The eddies of experiences, entrapping
When they crystallize like that piece of glass
To break at the slightest blow
To fall into pieces…
The broken glass,  the splinters of my being;

- if only with time I had learnt to flow?

"Who got milled, my mother or the grain?"

Callused hands, chipped nails, coloured taints
Shedding each peel,
Suppleness lost in the careworn days
The toil, the tussle, the tugging
The role of a mother lugging
Tangled tresses, twining
Could it be as tiresome as my own thinking?
The bulge  of  the once curvaceous
Brow beaten, as the furrowed lines deepening
The jagged contours of my fingers
Creasing along the pain, the pleasure to be born
As the criss cross lines on my palm
They grip the mighty role of being nature’s bearer
They need to hold on too, to the pillar of  being  a mother?
C

Civility, not a woman's asset?

To put a woman's 'sensitivity' to test

You would  stir up a hornet’s nest,

She  will be all about the place

The whining & whimpering ever in trace

Was it that Eve never evolved

from her primitive designs

Or is it that the feminine

 is ever towed to the feline?

The flaws & the retracted claws

What is in their mind that like a worm gnaws?

The perpetual squabble among women

Un-ladylike, the emotional overflow

Strung around their neck, like a talisman

 to drag you in the monotonous drawl of being in the female Orbit;

Their bickering to bewitch  a befuddling statesmen in gambit

You hail them the gentler, the fairer sex,

Sensitive, sensational, qualities that do perplex

Do we see that gentility when a 'damsel goes in distress

Its ever the green-eyed envy, upon the other, the mounting duress   

 Like the virulent flu they spread;

To sneeze, and wheeze out of breath;

But calmness….would that ever fit in their girth?

The female is the one with her balance tipped

Wise was the one who quipped

“level-headedness is not a lady’s asset

Would she rather tuck her emotions as well

In that corset?”

How long...?

How long can I tether my babe to my little space

To prevent, or pre-empt every pitfall

Or how far can I spread that safety net

To guard his every step, lest he stumbles and falls

The triumphs, the tribulations, the travails

The trepidations of being a mother

that overshadows the natural-

to nurture in openness,

to let the budding breathe in the vastness?

I cut the umbilical, for birthing the new

Time chooses its moment so,  

As does nature tunes in, for every stage of ripening

The inborn comes to the fore, to fight, the finest of becoming

Will not my protective shell, protract his burgeoning?

To clamp my thoughts and cramp his being in my mind-space

Could I seek the choicest of nature in trace?

Yet, I cling, unwilling to let go

Is it my overarching love or the overbearing ego

That a mother knows best;

When she is as earthen of the nature

That puts her to the test?

Better than the rest?

How sure are we of our boundaries

Yet, we are unsure of the ‘other’

The presence of which, permeates into our ether

How it looms large as our opponent

What could be opposing than but our conflicts within?

We covet, compete, compare

That which is not ‘I’ is not to bear

How lamely we turn wild

To outstrip, to oust, even outcaste from our territory,

The one, not so meek or mild?

Ah! What law of nature could that be?

Ever the duel ‘twixt the predator and prey

 To view the ‘other’  as a rival

To feel challenged, to outpace,  to win

To struggle, to strive, to strike,

The vengeance, the hate, the war

That declares the ‘big’ ‘n’ small

How petty we stoop to be

In order to get better, bigger

To just put down the 'other'

And, when would we lift our souls from the gutter

to turn human, before death strikes as the leveller? 

I need not chase the end!

Can there be an end ever?

To  keep running along

The winding path thinking it would end somewhere;

But the seemingly near goes farther with every step

 Every breath that wheezes past;

Everything around me that streaks, as fast

It’s a blur in that race;

The end has no face

 Its contours changing, fading, surfacing

How elusive it is,

when the sky seems to meet the sea, but it never does

 Why would I chase, covet that which never is?

If I could pause awhile;

My thoughts stretched to that horizon

And, my breath that flows in rapids;

If that could ripple in the stillness of the deep sea;

I would realize that there is no end;

but just the infinite,

in that very moment, I learn to live to the lees