MADHU SRIWASTAV

Blob of Water

Sky is wet
Wind refreshing
Rain sprays on me
All shapes of green bemuse
Soaked earth beckons
I become a blob of water
Slide down the window frame
Down the body of the jerky bus
Splash on the road
Slip into the bushes
Born out of the elements
I discard my comingled form
Kiss mother earth
Go down it’s crevasses
Into the soft slushy mud
Love the darkness
The heavenly silence of life
Why wait for death to disentangle
And bring my pure self out
Am happy to lose my shape
Needless cloggy thoughts
Trappings of being human
Social professional and what not
The jargons man has created
To edify his life and being
All defying his elemental self!
Am ecstatic… back where I sprung from
Waiting to shoot up as tree
Feel the embrace of the sun
Playful wind on my leaves
Scratch of squirrels running by
Listening to bird gossip
Dance when the rain is pouring
Under the expansive sky!…
Honk honk!… the bus intrudes
My lips gape under a wet sky.


OT

Mobile beds in rows
Lined one after another
Facing the nervous sliding doors
Of the hospital OT
The doors open to reveal
More beds in rows
Wrapped in blue sheets
Bodies with blue caps
I seek my mom
They draw a bed
She becomes a person
Takes my hands
In her channel driven hand
Her heart racing fast
We talk, she cries
Her heart finds its usual beat
She’s drawn away now reassured
Into the cold lifeless chamber
To replenish her life
Into such chamber she had once brought life
Now she has come to secure hers
Those in her life come to ensure this
The cycle of life begins and often ends in the OT
The sun around which revolves clinical life and death.