Poem

A Senile Chap

Look at the flowers too! Yes, no?
(Source – Pixabay)

Repeating the same old,

The same old, that it becomes a habit,

A habit to conjure the past from the dead,

The dead carried along for so long, selfishly

Building the monuments, tall and high,

Covering the vision that sees nothing,

Nothing but the monuments touching the sky,

The sky that appears to come crushing down (but never does),

And so one lives guarded, crowded by an idea,

An idea that is a few inches tall,

And a few inches wide,

And that never, never dares to stride.

Thwarted and beaten up by an idea,

A senile chap, no one knows how old,

Goes on living, seeing what is shown,

Hearing what is told, repeating

Very well the one idea that is known.


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Everything, Always, Today and Now

Everything bursting with joy…
Image by Joe from Pixabay

Keeping aside what I know

About the way and ways,

What have been said, what they may say,

The lurking insecurities, glaring expectations,

The dense fears, heavy hopes,

And the definite doubts,

Keeping aside what I know.

Now what is left looks so new,

So quiet, tender, fresh… fresh like a plant.

Suddenly alive, burning bright,

Moving directionless at once yet slow

Merging lovingly with everything around,

Everything that is alive and burning bright,

Everything, always, today and now

Is what is left and it looks so new.


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The Ocean of Air

Love is in the air, always!
[Source – Pixabay]

The ocean of air stood

Heavy with impurities, until it rose again

With love to revive life.


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Apples

A life of freedom.
[Source – Pixabay]

Up on the tree defying gravity,

Red or green or the golden me

Appears the same like the rest on the tree.

Fruits of love mixed with manure, sin-free

In one, sinful in yet another story;

An apple, that is writing this ode to apples like me,

Reveals the truth that it has no identity.


Hear-ho, hear-o! Here-here, go slow!

Don’t rush to grasp, to know

The unknown, here-here, go slow!


Apples in chronicles

Apples in stores and wars

Apples – rhyming schemes

Apples and vitamins

Apples packed in tins

Apples starring in films

Apples rotting in bins

Is truth but also the past that doesn’t last

Until you carry it along for too long,

To understand that which is long gone,

Never seeing the o-so-fresh song,

You carry the long gone.


While we, the apples, are little bundles of the now,

Up on the tree, now on the floor,

Now fresh, now rotten, now gone,

Now a seed, now born,

Never-never-never in a hurry to rise or fall,

Never-never-never in a hurry to live or die,

For we, the apples, are little bundles of the now.

The joy in action!
[Source – Pixabay]

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From the Perspective of a Chicken

Pay in kind.
[Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay]

From the Perspective of a Chicken

Hung upside down

Tied in a bundle like a bundle

I, yes me, clucked alone,

Cluck-cluck-cluck!

Were them other chaps sleeping?

Silly they, how could they

When hung upside down?

Whirring the scooter went

And I, and my folks, went along.

Sleep evaded and anger rushed

In my chicken veins and heart and brain,

I, yes me, clucked alone

And I concocted a simple plan!

Cluck-cluck-cluck!

Raised neck feathers, I’ll jump, peck, spur and flog,

Them two rascals whirring on this scooter.

See, do see, you will see, the fight

For I, yes me, am clucking alone.

Cluck-cluck-cluck!

Brethren, chaps, wake up

There is a shop

That’s the battleground

Them two rascals whirring on the scooter have professed

Ha! They say it’s a chicken shop

We own no such shop.

Blood!!!

Clucked the Chicken!

They’ll see, who is stronger

When not tied in a bundle like a bundle

And hung upside down.

Brethren, attack!
[Source – Pixabay]

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A Dog Trying to Cross the Road

A dog trying to cross the road

I said to myself

Dashing cars dashed by

Whizz honk-honk-honk whizz

Right left, left right

This metallic river in a hurry

Tries to reach somewhere

Trying, reaching is living

I said to myself

But what about the poor dog,

Who is trying to cross the road?

The dog stood on the footpath

Aware about the hurrying metallic river

Trying nothing, reaching nowhere

Moving now, stopping now, living now.


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Singing The River Song But Now…

Getting the oar…
[Image by Ashok SP from tramptraveller.com]

On a round little boat

Rowing

I make circles on the river

Going

Catching nothing but matching the twinkling

Sound

That the river makes, singing

Aloud

The eternal song – fresh and fragrant –

Ever

And forever – the twirling dancing roar of the

River

Meets mountains, clouds, the slant sunlight and the gazy night

Alike,

Exploding in joy, splashing timelessness in the air and

Life

In every drop.


Rapturously it unfolds…
[Image by Alejandro Piñero Amerio from Pixabay]

On a round little boat

Rowing

I make circles on the river

Going

Watching rocks, trees, the playful wind and the dancing

Shadows

That fall on the river silently, attuned to its

Flow

Rapturously it unfolds, turning, twisting, shaping its

Way

Melody-like, harmoniously, day by

Day

By day, and this gargantuan movement appears

Unmoving

To those who fetch the tools to measure the

Unmeasurable

And pin it to the wall.


Trash meets the ocean.
[Image by Szabolcs Molnar from Pixabay]

The round little boat is NOW facing the riverine plastic trash monster

That has devoured the oar I used to beat it

Foolishly… like a fool fooling no one

And the river goes on to meet the ocean.


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The Lion’s Truth

Your highness, you rule!
[Source – Pixabay]

What shade is the lion’s

Truth? Grassland golden, hunting prey in red

Marking the dark night black

Soaking in wet sky blue

Of the stream, cloudy, stony, fish green

And scent heavy wind’s white

Smelling dry muddy earth’s brown

Resting, playing shadows under the sun’s yellow

Colouring death not in sorrow

Mankind behind great walls checks

Time, never finding how come his truth

Is different from the lion’s.

“It is not, truth is truth, same for all”, said the lion.
[Source – Pixabay]

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In The Sundarbans

Poem

[Source – Pixabay]

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Tides rise to meet the sky

In the Sundarbans

As the sky dives frequently

To borrow some condiments

From its marshy islands

For making rain;

Often overdoing, then hitting

The Sundarbans

With cyclones and storms

Flooding itself, the sky

Meets the tides

In the Sundarbans.

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The Bengal Tiger
[Source – Wikimedia Commons]

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Flora and fauna there

Love drama

And everyone’s a fan of the Bengal Tiger,

A method actor,

Its every move, meaningful.

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And us folks, we take our boats

And get busy earning a living or sightseeing

(Hands tied, backs bent, loans taken, empty stomachs

Populated, polluted, dripping blood, we work so hard to make a living)

When we can simply live,

Live simply, now, here and there

In the Sundarbans.

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[Source – Pixabay]


Read more about the Sundarbans and also, “Explore Rohan Chakravarty’s Ecologically Conscious Map Of The Sunderbans.”

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Watch these insightful short documentaries to understand the Sundarbans better –

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Mushroomed – An Ode to the Fungi

Mushroomed mushrooms are talking!
[Source – Pixabay]

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Little umbrellas, soft buddies beaming in damp, dark sites

In the jungle, have more to say, they’re saying now

Through the wood wide web, the underground kites

*

Fungi flies, less on whim, on purpose more, humble and old

Hyphen hyphae, thready threads, join the words spoken

By a baby plant and those tall giant trees old

*

Together, symbiotic, altruistic, in harmony and love with growth

Of one and all; living, dying, killing like the Armillaria

Its dear host trees, devouring forests, sailing forth

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Layering layered humus, rich, fertile, full with nutrients timely

Rejuvenating the drunken dull poisonous air

Feeding on persistent toxins, stubborn plastic finely

*

Breaking, storing carbon in the soil, toiling freely, fungi

And friends mineralise earth, unburdening it quietly

“Decomposing since one billion years“, said fossils of fungi

*

Its fruits – mushrooms – mushroom pleasantly,

Well aware of the change hitting the planet

And the mighty meets, sees the ground, underground naturally

There the mycelia run, binding all in one

Showing, nicely, what is to be done.

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Oyster mushroom mycelium growing in a petri dish on coffee grounds.
[Source – Wikimedia Commons]

Fungi marched onto land more than a billion years ago. Many fungi partnered with plants, which largely lacked these digestive juices. Mycologists believe that this alliance allowed plants to inhabit land around 700 million years ago. Many millions of years later, one evolutionary branch of fungi led to the development of animals.

― Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

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A group of elongated cells (hyphae) from the filamentous fungus Podospora anserina.
[Source – Wikimedia Commons]

I see the mycelium as the Earth’s natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross-species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape.

― Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

Watch these short clips and be amazed –

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Read more about our – neither plants nor animals – friends, the fungi –

A Billion-Year-Old Fungus May Hold Clues to Life’s Arrival on Land

The Untapped Potential of the Amazon’s Plastic-Eating Mushroom

Soil Carbon Sequestration and its Relationship with Climate Change

Benefits of Fungi for the Environment and Humans


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