The Other Side of the Road

The Other Side of the Road

A simpler life I guess we all want that
From time to time.
The mess in my head
Was like an unruly sullen cloud
Refusing to serve or connect
I had done everything wrong
Before I was thirty.

Thinking things through
I realized
I had been gazing for a lifetime
wistfully
At the other side,
The wrong side of the road.

Whiling my life away, within, without .
Hoping
Things will get better on this side
my eyes firmly planted
With seeds of stardust sown
At midnight
Carried by the elusive wind
From nowhere,
From somewhere,
From anywhere,
Other than where I belong.

The other side always beckoned
My brittle brain
Like ships in bottles hint at fantastic voyages
Like rice grains with your name on it
In magical minutae
Make you wonder
At possibilities.

And when I was wondering
In a wild hollow despair
Just what I could do right
Life and it's partnerships
Rejected
Data type mismatchs.

I decided on a hunch
to erase it all
delete my programming.

Ironically I chose another program
Not life.
From there
Yes you're right

I had been gazing through a haze of hope
Taking my fill of the heartening vision
On the other side of the road

And many sinuous paths taken since
But never the undulating ease
Of my vision
Balm to distressed heart
Antidote and catalyst
Of pain.

Lightly the village belle
swayed her snaking hips
on a rusty path
By remote rail road track
Pot of water  balanced upon her head
Returning composed
to some unknown
Humble homestead
Some rustic hamlet
Food to be cooked over
Fire to be made
Husband and children to be fed
Yard swept
And the pots scoured
For next day

Her lofty head proud carriage
The ceaseless matchless ebb and flow of
A life  I envied flowing with ease of water through
time weaving fluid space
Into a magic of endless though
Numbered days
Easy as her hips
Carefree elegant sashay.

But
That was then
And trials and errors
Hard hits and misses have corrected my path
Tribulations have freed tears of truth
removed the stone chip in my
glass eye of inversions and parallax
My vision is freed of
Virtual images.

Now I know
Where I am
I belong

I am on
The other side of the road with a purpose
A formative plan
A quest
And
Two questions
can never match
The same answer.

All rights reserved
(c) Amrita Valan 2014