AVIAN  ANGELS

As the avian angels swerve past me

In dawn’s twilight to shock me with delight

I suffer from a temporary fright ;

But alas ! The grains I scattered on my roof

 Miss their loving , penetrating sight ;

For the flurry of their excited wings scatter

Pearls of misty blinding dreams

That overshadow the Earth

Making them revel as they fly

In thoughts of yester  night

With its dizzy Romantic height--

On  the smooth glade in the jungle

Where their great grand parents danced

With the sweet children of their nocturnal desires

In the halo of thin streaks  of sun light

Streaming in thro’ dense foliage

Awaking the forest to the bliss of dawn’s

Elevating delight.

Look how hastily does the whitish Moon slowly alight

From the steep steps of the sky

To watch, and then dance away with clouds

Into a new sky strewn with petals of roses

Burning all bright !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 25/03/15

FICTION : FEMALE   FRENEMIES :

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(Part—1)

Dark Dawn

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There was a strange palpitation in his heart. In last so many years he had never

felt like this in his habitual company of loneliness.  A shooting star crossed the

 sky of his heart reminding him of  the moments of passion  lost into the ripples

of the river Mahanadi . It was a morning . Some lightly dark clouds came floating

in  to shadow the silhouette moon in a moment . She sat beside him on a piece

 of rock on the bank dangling her bare feet into the waters of the river

narrating her dilemma, “Do you know, Saroj I’m really torn between my love for

you and my proposed marriage with Manmath Panigrahi. You know I can’t live

without you but I also don’t know how to get away from the snare of my

involvement with him…do you understand ? “

Her tongue was getting choked as she spoke.

Saroj kept imagining many moments of objectionable intimacy between the two

as he kept looking deep into her eyes shedding drops of warm tears.The river

looked at her in amazement .Then he took her  right hand into his fold of his

palms, kissed them and said, “Don’t …please don’t cry…I’m ready for all

consequences.”But as he was saying this his hands were getting moist with

 droplets of sweat dripping from depths of the pores of an anguished skin where

her palm’s maroon mehendi was taking on a red color .The rose that sprouted

long back in the garden of his heart shrugged its petals to look at the chemistry

of love weaving mysterious beats in two hearts into a bead of an invisible rosary

with silent chants of a divine feeling of togetherness at a secret place…for rarely

had they such opportunity to meet . Slowly the dawn darked with a few drops

of drizzle awaking the two souls to rise above the material body into feelings of

strange love in the soul of rain drenching them .

They sat on in spite of rain, rather with rain. Saroj was picking pearls of those

moments of intimacy  from her tears they had a few months back in the

courtyard of Leena’s house under a full moon. Leena sat shivering somewhat

amazed, wondering at the reason behind her tears.And the great river kept

 flowing with drops of rain and droplets of tears mingling into the giant flow…

(to be continued…)

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 

BEGUILED

I’m in love with such beautiful Evenings on run

That pass thro’ uncertain nights of casual love with moon,

Sometimes ending up with vermilion of Sun

On their foreheads, acquiring new recognition all so soon;

Here images of trees in the pool are more real

Than promises made by creatures of flesh and blood,

For they keep on constantly trying to sip in the depth of pool

When Evenings change their nature of human blood;

Images merge into the sky despite the layer of moss

On surface of pool’s water cooling anarchy of passion in wind,

When Evenings are restless like insecure stars at loss

Of wit, in face of temptations made by false suns at the hind ;

O God why do you put man in such situations of beguiling mid air

Forcing him to sway like a hopeless plantain leaf under Sun’s ire !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 10.03.15

DREAMING PALASH

Ripples in the river freak out in wind multiplying ,

Filling in the blues in my mind with beauty of waters

Rare like blue moon in a placid March morning ,

Lost into her joys of giving the peace that she offers ;

As I sit waiting for you in the labyrinths of my desire

Hangovers of dilemmas familiar still haunt faintly ,

When squirrels rush out of tree tops with tails flicking,

Their excited chittering merging into waves so lovely ;

White butterflies flit across carrying the glory of a Sun

With loads of grains of dreams on their wings shining

Like the lost stars that were so bewitching but gone ,

And the luscious young mangoes in love cutely smiling ;

Don’t touch me for I’m now a red Palash in bloom

Waiting for beaks of Spring for an end to my gloom .

@copy right : saroj k. padhi 11/03/15

            

SEARCHING OUTSIDE

Mother :

Severed from the umbilical cord

I was flung into arms of many foster mothers

but none was like you

in their kisses, cuddles, smiles and tears,

love and fears ;

in my reflections and recollections

awe and wonder

I love the Goddess in you.

First love:

Away from your arms , my Love

I was wooed by many

but none was like you-

in their sweetness or saltiness,

anger or shyness,

in tantalizing closeness or pining distances,

or in the taste of their honeyed dew,

you were you

and in spite of not being with you

I love the Goddess in you.

Goddess:

Don’t know why I’m always in search of you

in my relations with the ‘other’

knowing pretty well

that the ideal can never be real-

a secret search for you silently smothers

and the debilitating man in me whimpers

at last to drop perhaps

into a singing swan’s falling feathers .

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi /8.03.15

LAPSES OF YOUTH

Ask that Chikinia park if you want to know

About the lapses of my youth,

Where on the chests of rocks lie engraved

Beautiful words of my pious sin

Sparkling  like shiny souls of angels in love with God

In the scribbles of passion on the body of green sod;

Where Spring had run riot into head of a rose

Driving it crazy for a cooling fire

In search of which it multiplied into myriad dancing images

In the nearby lake’s waters pierced by a noon Sun in ire--

The  rose was pure love and ripples of lake, its singing lyre ;

And memories were lost children in the dark of a dead forest

Burning dry leaves of lost love

In  strokes of stray Summer fires,

At the touch of my Love’s ambling feet

When into smokes of the moon rose the blazing spires.

Ask the dust kissed by her feet at the park

If you care to know about the lapses of my youth--

Its fragrance will tell you about the weaving of wishes

Around the ariel roots hanging from its age old banyan

That  turned us into a Naga couple in ecstatic dance of love

To the tune of wind played by an unseen charmer from above.

@copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 09/03/15

TOUCHING THE  PEEPUL

As I touch the Peepul again

Under a morning mist’s rain

Birds alight from its lofty tops

To peck at my heart’s old pain ;

For their feed of daily morning dose

In my dreaming blood’s subtle grain,

When the Goddess is still in her sleep

Leaving us to a life so very uncertain !

What can I do now except watch

Time’s white herons swoop down

To pick from fresh quarries,

With butterflies roving around scattering

Dust of their hidden glories,

On flowers half asleep most of whom

Are in a long dreaming  spree,

Love that was born tied to chains

Is now absolutely frolicsome and free;

This is the beauty of being besotted

With life under a beautiful Peepul tree.

@COPY RIGHT : SAROJ K. PADHI-- 07/03/15