She
Brought you a book of poems,
She, your new-found comrade,
As though present when all went by
you,
And witnessing you when all went by
her,
Through story-portions shared for days and days,
In moment after tired moment of fleeting
camaraderie-building nostalgia,
Trapped by sheer word-crafted imagery.
The book
Caught hold of me with its soft, seeking, unhurting
tentacles,
Coiling around me and lighting the dormant
embers of word-lava
Lying as unheeded thought-seeds inside for
years,
Waiting to burst open a thin excuse of a veneer,
And suddenly these thought-embers knock,
bang, pound on the dusty fort-door
That lay shut, for no reason, like the
routine shutting of creaky closing-hour doors
By the weary guard of a museum of history
told ‘one fine next day’ that the monument
Is no longer to be visited, and worse
still,
Is to be out of bounds, by decree, for no
actual rhyme or reason…
...And now the flood-gates open, and the fire
rages...!
