Category: Poetry

Strange and Familiar

Familiar to a billion
But utterly strange
To me

Yet… perhaps no greater love for this moment
Whether it seem strange or familiar
Than mine

Sometimes the path
Is so well lit
With little thought
I follow it

And then it ends
So I arrive
At places
Unexpected

Sometimes pretty
Sometimes dour
Sometimes ugly
Sometimes flowered

In the warmth of a summer night
We picnic on the pier
A gathering of family and friends
Me, set apart, just pondering

We are all just shadows
In the moonlight
Beneath a darkening sky
Of stars and cloud

All in motion, even I
In this moment fixed in time
Which has no memory
Or destiny

A rocky beach
A sleepy sea
A sulfur sky
And cobalt high

Clouds whispering
Breathe in the air
My body sings

With the beauty
Of existence

Serrated edge
Rips the sky
Sunders ice
Pleases eye

Sometimes
The ripples of change
Become frozen
Caught in time
Like the waves
Lapping up on the fringe
Of a freezing lake

And I am the ship
Caught in arctic ice
Waiting out the season
Hoping for the sea to open

In an urban landscape
Dust sodden blues
Rendered insincere
Dull, like the smoke-filled sky

I seek an escape
To the clear air
And verdant greens
Of the countryside

An escape denied
By the pervasive pollution
Of northern India

Sometimes
I wonder

If I can be still
For just a moment longer
If I can be present
In all this shadow and blur
Will the world make more sense

Will anyone see

The blur that is life
In the anonymity of movement

Where was I?
When I shot this?

Like waking up
In a strange bed
In a strange room

Trying to find
That one thing
That one point
Of recognition

A silhouette
Bicycle rickshaw

India