Mumtaz N K
#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
Absolutely beautiful. Loved the poem, especially the last two lines
Such a brilliant poem, Mumtaz . Loved the rich imagery and the rhythm and the different layers of emotions in the poem. The second stanza is so very poignant. I shall come back to read it again.
Thank you ladies, we are muses to one another.
Stunning my dear💚💚
Intriguing roads
Thank you. I wanted to write something on the lines of a song by a famous lyricist. I’ve in no way achieved that.