Roads

  #AZatPP #R

Many grey roads have I crossed,

Some in time’ve fall’n out of use, and were lost.

Some led to cities of yore,

Others, watery paths, anchor’d ships at shores.

Dirty brown straggling paths

Dared venture into the wildnesses’ heart.

Pine laden, steep were some,

Where silence mingled with the bee’s hum.

Mountains in majesty stared at tiny beings

As if permission, they were decreeing.

****

Some roads were strewn with gore

and yearning

Of lost people who’d gain by unlearning.

Lessons of love criss-crossed forking

Into rough paths of hatred. Stoking

Flames of wrath, pain and loss,

Such roads led to nothing but dross.

Blood-stain’d, war-stricken roads echoed

Nightmarish silences, when mortar children swallowed.

****

None, appealed more to my eyes ,than the muddy path  

That into verdant fields dipped, where the bent farmer sighs.

Hands threshing, winnowing seasonal crop,

Was the place, where my hurried footsteps stopped.

That’s when I fathomed neither cartography nor walls o’ flint

Can arrest errantry and rambling nature’s footprint.

****

© Mumtaz N Khorakiwala

10.-2-2021

Picture courtesy: Jamomír Kavan

Unsplash.com