on love

as in fishing

the one that gets away

is usually the one holding the rod

sitting on the quay

but it’s more like, say, bull-fighting

a competitive, though one-sided, blood-sport

where the bull’s going down - who’s gonna go down anyway

but whether it’s gonna be at the hands of this matador

or the next - depends on what makes first contact

the beast’s horns or the brute’s blade

but for an analogy more apt, an interesting - and fair- affair

a duel to the death it’d have to be made

being wary

(of new-found love)

i grew up on a farm that my dad owned

a large place right by a state highway

where cars and buses and big trucks sped by

at all times of the night and much more by day

we always had a bunch of dogs milling about

and there were always new ones coming in to stay

but i wouldn’t pet the new ones for a week or two

which also, i guess, kept them out of the way

and the wrath of the residents and the current

top dogs, be it ramprasad or brutus or pyaare

but my reasons i admit were more selfish. i just

wanted to be sure before i let them in that they

would survive. for on the farm we’d come to accept that

many a new strays would be claimed by the highway

an early-winter evening walk

the distant silhouetted poplars lean

conspiratorially all to the same degree

gossiping about the electric poles who stand

lopsided tipping this way and that

like puppets slumped, with lank wires linked

or like they’ve had a bit too much to drink

full-tight, scattered, still, the whole lot 

lost in their world of abstracted thought

lost, in the vast expanse of the bare fields

relieved for now of the monsoon yield

and a mob of babblers, bunny-hopping, flies by

loudly cursing both the poles and the poplars sly

loving each other's company but being obdurate

loudly refusing to agree about who is more to berate

they fly arguing from tree to bush unable to decide

and over the hay stacked high by the roadside

that’s rustling with something bustling inside, probably rats

that the dog that’s taken up my trail pauses to sniff at

there’s the smell of hay and smoke and dung and

buffaloes in the air from the temporary gujjar camp

that rises with the dust raised by the speeding van

that rattles by disjointedly making the dog look askance

having changed colour the setting red sun

disappears before it’s even reached the horizon

leaving the distant trees, blue with longing, untouched

and the dog and me to see if we’d get along, if we’d match up

the trouble with being free

and then you’ll come to a bend in the road

sitting at the edge on a large stone

staring at the snowclad mountains beyond

your heart’ll wonder if it’s here that you belong

but it won’t be

for there is no place you’re going

there’s no place you have to be

there’s nowhere you belong

you are finally free