Nothing's beyond reckoning —that 

dissolution of the self does not happen, dang

it does not matter much in reality

And though reality is relative, what with the passage of time

and lives in a continual transition

Pain is real, so are smiles and breezy mornings

Nothing relative there

When soul-crushing things happen, and there is

an ache difficult to set aside, the questions of 

existence become moot

People have still strived to find scraps of meaning

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Raw stuff

Come walk with me
We will talk about things and laugh
At our frailties 

And the banal intricacies of this world

Love Stays
Beyond questions and dilemmas 

When we smile and eat and drink
Together 

Life seems ok
And things are alright. 

2

I leave but I do not reach
More of a drifter

I walk with the bird’s intent
And the need to return 

Every man needs to return
Home
An odyssey undefined

So I walk
But I don’t reach

So I walk with the emptiness of
Oceans 

And I walk
And I walk

Beguiled the universe floats
Around me 

It’s a gossamer I have weaved
A tale I have spun

Let me color the tale
With my moments 

So I walk
So I drift

Evenings anchored in my
Lungs
A melancholy on my
Hands

It’s the rain of an individual
Apocalypse 

An individual
End of time

Passage

In the air a sadness
Looms large

I haven’t been the poet that I am 

This monsoon is different
A reminder of
Another time
Another life

I have changed
With the universe
Around me

Mountains and valleys
Of my days
A quiet passage
Through my time

We live in our time
In our hearts, in our life

And time flows by
Like it never knew

Like it never knew

-Anant

Mayflower

A gossamer-thin ocean hits low notes today.

Only the lower ones; the hapless sullen lover,

The nonchalant up above couldn’t care less. 

 

Wind bleats, boat creaks, pet dogs merry-hop

In the sea-wind. Voices rise and fall with the waves.

These shores, they say, have seen the Mayflower.

Countless others have sunk to the bottom,

A slow dissolution of collective merciful being.

People of the first light walked here; These waters 

Are the finest monuments. Revered flotsam of undaunted lives.

Lighthouses, moved and freshly painted, still carry the

Dim fragments of light; strewn from the blue hollow.

The biggest moon of the year's impending, we must head back 

Soon. Quietly, we exchange smiles like vows. 

Sense drowns deep in me or perhaps it’s the nip of the wind.

Like a fool I toss away my shoes and walk 

Barefoot on the beach, soft sand and silken touch and all. 

Anant Dhavale

( Edited significantly from the previous draft.)

Things

Hands warmth hugs kisses
being near being one

journeys long afar brows
the heaviness ajar 

time ripens fast slow
songs jade stale

discordance thought
memory deep trench years

flaps wings the gallop
the heart the stories the 

solitude in-between. 

- Anant Dhavale

( The conjunctions/ prepositions were blocking the flow 

so I got rid of them. This note too was unnecessary, 

but there is too much real estate on the page. )

Kanher

No recompense for the thousand shards of self

Buzzards one and two, high they used to fly. I noticed them
Frequently on my long wind-bitter winter walks
A whimsy with its own color and smell

I did not see them along the decaying heights of New York
None. Drifters, yes, hordes of them, fellows 

Stranded on the artistic bends. Quiet
And turbulent souls on late-night homeward trains

No respite from living, from breathing the continuum
Veins are freed from the weather’s wrath; but storms?

Always always on the way back, a clockwork of the absurd —
The Kanher loses a shade of red each summer with me

This evening could almost kill me and yet.
 

--

Anant Dhavale

(Kanher : Nerium Oleander)