Of Spring and Hope

 (Wote this poem many years ago, and I have kept editing it since. )

Wheelchair tucked into the table

she can hardly breathe, and yet
he tries to feed her smaller morsels

God knows how many jobs
she had worked
to feed him

Her head wobbles every so often
and the tissues keep falling off

He slowly tucks them back

She can hardly eat

all she wants is to spend some time
with her boy
before it all comes
crumbling down

He holds a glass of water.
she sips a drop or two
and shakes her head
the effort
takes a toll on her weary life

The day is dying bit by bit and
the sky is probably crimson red outside

Spring is slowly making its way,
they say it brings hope and life for the 
new and the old

Days dissolve into dusk
nights roll into dawns;
the coherence
simple and easy, caring
like doting mothers
and loving sons

The tissues keep falling off, 
and God knows why but
I got tears in my eyes

 
--
Anant Dhavale
Copyright © Anant Dhavale

From my WIP novella

Nuggets from ‘Nobody’s War’

 

 

 

‘Liberals, my friend, are bad for business.’

 

‘Politics and poetry betray logic, Kwaqa.’

 

‘It always takes an outsider. For better or for worse.’

 

‘I do not age. I may die, but only if a system somewhere thinks it’s my time.’

 

‘Men my age die alone, in sleep.’

 

‘One must be in their element, no matter the situation.’

  

‘There is a certain joy that poetry exudes. A sadness too. A beautiful, blue sadness.’

 

‘Trust means nothing to us. It’s a phony construct. We do not deal in such currencies.’

 

‘For some, information is a deterrent. For some, it is a call to action. For us, it is plain and simple leverage.’

 

‘Her face shines in the moonlight like a sculpture. It’s his sculpture, a picture he has imagined and drawn and chiseled in his mind, a ripple of glimmer, a momentary breeze. For him, this togetherness lasts forever, though his mind tells him otherwise.’

 

 Anant Dhavale 

A poem

 Now this calm, now this tumult

how we’ve closed these circles - a lapse,

a gossamer of things gone, things to be 

When old age strikes, and we wince and writhe in pain, what would these loves mean then? Broken statuettes of yore. Faded artifacts from another time.

Guilt hangs from the gilded gates - 

years recounted, faces rehashed 

This, here is how looking back looks like 

-

Anant Dhavale