By Ekasmayi Naresh
Picture Credits: Pinterest
Note: This poem is about the poet’s description of the kinds of ardour (enthusiasm, or passion) that she feels towards her words when all else seems dull and dismal. She writes about the ardour for words being her ‘elixir’.
Successive seasons of house arrest,
many moons since I felt my best.
Funny how I began by calling this a “phase”,
nothing more than a momentary daze.
Now, more regular
than the burgeoning and ebbing sun,
this ruinous rambling, of self-soothing
platitudes, plays on
while the calendar dates,
faster than the untended
dishes in the sink, pile on.
So pervasive has the putrefaction
into this tedium been,
that several of my selves
have this decay seen,
as the only norm –
nothing out of the ordinary,
the only way to be.
My very presence seems performative
putting on the show of life
a sophistry of stage cues
saying when to cringe or cry,
but never one to feel less numb,
to end this dalliance
with all things derivative.
Trust this Aristotelian account
to have a dependable denouement;
predictable, to the keen eyed
uplifting, for the hopeful few.
In words, I still find my elixir –
written worlds of wonder
make my worldly wounds vanish
the ritual of pen to paper
is the only convalescent meal
for which I famish.
As thought mixes
with the thirst to thrive
and through the tips of my fingers
as I vociferously type,
like the monsoons, after a drought,
flood riverbeds into oceans,
this act of anchoring myself
on the uninhabited settlements
of pages,
bubbles back to existence
embers of ancient emotions.
To read more poems, click here.