10 reads

AWAY FROM HOME

The song plays again and again,

With red of new moon

And gold of morning sun.

Uncharted landscape of my brain,

I stop and walk stop and run!

The rhyming ends here...

Oh where are the hands of the clock, Mia?

She looks askance:

Are you asking me, mama?

She shakes her fluffy head,

And her lovely eyes seem to glisten

With a million words that she is not conditioned to utter.

So, Mia is no help.

Anyway she does not chew clock hands.

I do that, sometimes,

When madness takes over.

I want to stop the progress of time.

I am so far away from home,

Oh I can hear the old laughter,

And smell that rose he shyly gave me,

Those good eyes, how I remember!

I want to go back home!

But unless the clock stops counting the hours and minutes,

I know I cannot travel back in time.

Did I break the clock hands then?

Must have, in a fit of madness again...

THE END

Sharmila Mitra

6 July 2021