Silly giggling you
Your laughter swelled like
The crackle of a burning paper
You sat on the low branch sniffing
The heady scent of the mango blossoms
The mango foliage swayed eagerly
Devouring shreds of blue sky
You challenged the prankster squirrel
To a wordy duel
That stupid cuckoo sang itself hoarse
Big black busy ants
Crawled all the way up
Soon the flowers would turn into tiny mangoes
Time for love ,time for romance
The soft down of your luminescent neck
Vaguely acknowledged tender puppy love
Silly me, I wanted to own you
As if one could own the yonder Salihundam hills
You were plucking tender Bilwa leaves
Wet with the morning dew
Balancing yourself delicately on the compound wall
Your basket full, your hair shampoo-fragrant
I fumbled, I stuttered
With my Adam's apple heaving
Trying to propose to you
Stupid me, you were the wild jasmine bush
That trembled with love
As lazy many-hued butterflies flitted by
When big blue waves
Broke on the Kalingapatnam beach
And your tentative feet
Squished into the sea-washed sand
My love-words trailed away
Through tall Casuarina trees
Indistinguishable from the wind
Buzzing through their needle-leaves.
Selfish me, I wanted you all for me
When on the Amavasya night you and I
Lay under the inky infinitude of the cosmic sky
I failed to whisper my love
I could not speak nor gesture
My senses failed, slowly
Moving away from my mundane existence
As the night deepened
Clusters of glow-worms
Bored tiny electric holes
Into the night's expanse
It seemed to matter little
Whether I possessed you
Or even whether I existed.