Do you remember the sun?
Walking on a sandy beach with warmth bearing down,
A glazed sea, glistening and reflecting light;
As the sea shimmers, with each wave gently rolling in and out;
Warm sands crunching between your toes,
As you and I walk along the shore hand-in-hand;
It’s a marmalade day dream;
And, the only thing bitter is:
It’s not here, and now!
Staring out from the battlement,
At the gathering force of foes in the valley below,
Where the horde has amassed,
And is now whipping itself up into a deafening storm of hurricane force,
Who will be the victor and vanquished when it finally abates?
Will my blade shatter and spoil in the ferocious onslaught to come?
Or, will I find myself drowning in a pool of my own blood and gore?
Uncertainty is anathema to even the best laid plans;
An unwelcome harbinger on the eve of any battle,
When grim resolve, is the only comfort that temptress salvation will allow.
Tendrils of cold,
Twisting, spiralling, around and over you,
In the wintery twilight;
Probing for weakness,
Delivering sharp chills at each fleeting touch;
Raising goose bumps to bursting,
And slowly attacking the feet with the onset of frostbite!
Mistress Winter,
You are a cruel and determined foe;
Insatiable in your pursuit of the living for their warmth,
With an age old repertoire of traps, tricks and feints at her disposal,
And, an abundance of patience-
Like a huntress, harrying her prey,
Until it’s found cornered and covering;
Before, finally, setting in for the kill:
In ruthless single-mindedness given a chance!
So, don’t fall victim to this Huntress Winter’s feints,
Wrap up warm and offer her only a passing shiver,
When what she longs for is something far more grievous,
To add to the growing collection of trophies from this season’s tally of kills.
Plucking at the strings of emotion,
Bringing a masterpiece casually into being,
A soloist’s rendition mirrors your condition;
Like the crown of flowers nestling on your head,
Fluttering in the gentle breeze,
Slowly loosing each of its petals to the wind,
Falling away, and leaving only stem and nettles,
To soak on the surface of a lake of tears,
Before submerging and resting at the basin to be covered in detritus,
An apt accompaniment to sudden bout of grief:
As you wade into the middle seeking elusive redemption,
From your memories and dreams, turned harassing nightmares of late,
Toward the inevitability of your own drowning,
For, the further you move out, the deeper the lake gets;
And, what you search for is nowhere to be found,
Searching for solace and meaning in a soloists melancholy,
As your tears trail down to join those of thousands of others’ before you,
Who have found themselves in a similar state,
For you are not the first, nor the last, to experience this feeling of loss;
And it is our feelings and not our memories, that are the true common bond and uniter, both then and now.
We worship the same God my friend,
Just in different words and customs;
For God, evidently, loves wondrous variety,
As you should.
Don’t be ashamed of your tears,
For they are not made remotely from you in the clouds,
But are the uttering of the soul within;
Turned to vapour and urged by emotion to rise,
Steaming up the windows,
Before streaking down;
It shows you are brimming and overflowing with life,
More in touch with everything around you,
Than words can possibly describe.
Peace of mind is neither a birthright nor a privilege:
It is earned through a life time’s worth of sacrifice;
To reflect upon in the twilight of your years and be grateful to the truth:
I have done right.
You can runaway,
You can start again,
Turn your back on the past,
And, do it all over again – and, again!
Whatever you do though,
You can’t runaway from your memories,
For we are the sum total of our constituent experiences,
If you did miraculously somehow manage to detach yourself from them,
You’ll either be dead,
And, certainly, never the same again.
Predators among us roam freely,
In search of ‘prey’:
Making lambs at mercy of wolves and hyenas of us all;
Suppressed instincts that never left us;
Corrosive tides and difficult lives,
Washing away disguises borne of lies;
Sated by voyeurism;
A precursor to a revival of barbarism;
Or, their modern equivalents:
A meditation of the withdrawn for some,
Known as ”Hikikomori’ in the East, and “Recluse” in the West;
Outlet for boredom and over-complications,
Morbid fascination turned perversion for others,
When, abnormal becomes the new normal,
And, drawn-out silences are shattered by blood-curdling shrill cries;
A chorus too frequent to be isolated,
Ineffectiveness prevails,
And, what justice there is:
Is delivered at the end of the barrel of a vigilante’s gun.