People

You were around fifteen
When I was born
An young girl
And it was your time to shine
Bright as a moonbeam
Wild black mane
And lucent eyes
My baby self held in tenderness
For the first time

I never knew you
Except through photographs
So beautiful and so inaccessible
Easy to touch your glossy skin
Between my admiring fingers
But the person as distant
As a lost dream
Forgotten in the veils of night.

It's hard to put a finger on
The sense of people
Passing ships in the night
And the connections we make.
Sometimes all the feelings
Are imaginary.
A heroine build up from fantastic
Castles in your head.

A Globetrotter
A traveller
Versed in many tongues
Who charmed
One in a foreign land
And built her best
On the sea shore
Of a distant land.

From where she would fly
Desperately high
To claw at the branches that
Gave her a watchtower view
Of forgotten land and sky.

I was eighteen
When I faced this paragon
Turning into a mild parody
By slow dying degrees.
Which I defied
Deified with my
Need to dream.
She had lost her sheen
And was a plump homing pigeon
I was still enamoured
By her grace
And those deep lantern eyes.

So I made believe
She still carried starlight in them
And saw crystal fountains spring
Flowers from her smile.

Froth and lace
Woven elegance
Fake rainbows
And prismatic tricks
But eighteen is tender
To hallowed Madonna's
Of three and thirty years

I was thirsty
For her friendship.

For a sign
That I was significant.

I wasn't even sure
If she thought
I was human.
I was indulged
As one would
A kid.

I am standing now
On the rooftop
Of my liberation
To connect redeem myself
By offerings of Libation
To grace
On the cusp of 45
I no longer need
The same validation
Of my existence.

I spy her face
On Facebook
And think
God! She must be sixty.
How?
This was my leading lady
Ever nubile graceful doe.
Why?
Svelte figure soft face
Love lit intelligence
And grace
Nowhere near this tired
Weariness.
When?

Now I realise
Worship
Is an act
Of initiation
Into Time's
Erosion
Of values
Borrowed.
One metamorphosizes
Flies out on
Wings of fatality
With a prayer on the lips
of faith.

Values grow
Into features
And rewrites the face.

On the hour-glass of
Time
We gradually drift in and
Out of shape
Pouring ourselves grain
By grain
Towards tomorrow
Inexorably
Forever we fall
Till the Maker
Forgets
To turn over
Life's urn again.

Tomorrow
My sixty year old face
Will fearfully fascinate
Someone else
Dew in her gentle eyes
Treading water
Gingerly
On the quicksands
Of middle age.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017