(What all do I miss?)
The birdies and their fluttering wingsThe sunbirds, beetle-eaters, spider-hunters
The parrots, the pelicans and the pigeons
The nightingales and the sparrows
Their twittering alarms at dawn
Their childlike play under the sun all day
Their serene silences after twilight
And their arrant absence by midnight
Oh! How I would enjoy their games
Every afternoon spending hours after hours
Mesmerizing as they always were
The couple of them – spider-hunters
All around the drumstick tree,
That was their motherly refuge,
And occasionally visiting the hibiscus (bush)
Gently nudging its fragile petals
With an even more tender beak...
Groping for spiders, if at all, any.
The hibiscus style would annoy her
Troubled, she would curse it tersely
With the sweetest possible chirp
As if scolding the burgeon, for irritating her 😀
Oh! How I used to laugh at all this.
Then back again to mommy dearest (drumstick)
Pollinating her cheerful creamy flowers
(Though unaware of this, yet so innocently)
During hide and seek with the spiders
Oh! How I miss the families of parakeets
Thousands and thousands of them
Whose arrival was certain everyday
With the first ray of the golden sun
Their magnificent green, casting a spell
Their chirping, loudest and loveliest of all,
Would announce of their daily advent
On the evergreen tree of Neem- Their favourite evening hangout
Oh! How the parakeet struggled to hold
The tiny yellow bitter neem fruit
In its rosy red spouting beak
Distinctly visible in the sea of green
From my bedroom's balcony
Where I would remain glued for hours
Holding the bars of the barred balcony
A captive beholding the beauty of freedom
With the corners of my lips
Stretched wide into a grin
That would turn into a hearty laugh
Every time the green angel dropped
The canary yellow oval neem fruit
Oh! How I miss to scowl
At the light blue grey pigeons
Who were never found in a count
Of more or less than two 😏
For they would try time and again
(Never giving up)
To build their dream home
Of twigs and hay and potpourri
In my bedroom's balcony
(In doing so they succeeded
Never but once)
But would lay their eggs
Without a nest..... ;(
Oh! How I wish i could stop them
Help them, stop them from doing this
For the broken remains (of the egg)
Lying shattered on the railing
Epitome of a love gone waste...
Would upset me beyond measure
Genesis of a void that never can be filled
But for the mother...
Her entire world had come to an end...
Oh! How I wish I could speak
The dialect, the cooing of the pigeons
And articulate my feelings to her
For only a mother can apprehend
The pain of another mother
Both having suffered, a sorrow so huge
Lives blown apart
With the supernova of explosions
Would take quite a time
For both of us to recover
For life goes on, never stopping
And so, with wounds that never heal
But with a hope for the growth
Of new olive branches
The two of us move on.
And how I miss the winter guests
Painting the azure colossal heavens
With every shade possible
That the mighty seven can yield
Making my winters so unlike the west
Full of new hope and gaiety
Mother indeed is the best artist
She created us all with a different stroke
So very unique, none like any other
Hail!! Mother Nature.
