How have we become so banal, as grown-ups?
Remember when each everyone of us, was a poet?
We wrote about the crystal tinkling winters in Ashburnham,
with the words that sounded so foreign that we pretend to comprehend,
the heavenly velvet colors of our thoughts that we tried so hard to bend,
but eventually slipped between the lines where thoughts transcend?
The stories etched on paper, inked with care,
In the warmth of memories still hanging there.
Remember when each everyone of us, writes poems?
We wrote about redemption, friendship and love
’bout being so far away from home,
even the wooden chair in the English building knows
how our quietly whispered thoughts composed (…better than our parents!)
Through discursive self-expressive rhymes, distilling who we are,
in that language that was so unnatural but yet became so natural to our tongues?
I’m still so moved by this language till today,
how it resonates with the drumbeats in my heart,
the way it reminds me of Caddy, Dalloway, Scout;
the yellow wallpaper and the white elephant hills…
they so vividly lived,
filled my dreams and shaped who I became.
How have we stopped hosting poetry nights, now just because we settled for rites?