Who Am I to Wonder?

July 9, 2020 The Beacon Personal Notes 2

Losing Brain Function

Girijaa Upadhyay

Who am I to wonder?

Who am I to lament when cripples run marathons, the lame win the steeplechase.
When gnarled fingers knead soft dough
When the crumbling throw a sumptuous feast, which every one of the hundred guests enjoyed.
Who am I to shatter the invisible veil between Here and There,
Then and Now, between Fantasy and Reality, between It and Him.
Who am I to reconstruct the garbled into painful logical sequences?

Who am I to wonder when Past resurfaces as Present
And the Present morphs into nothing.
Who am I to shatter your Present.
My place is as a mute this side of the pane,
Because all else is in vain.

Who am I to wonder
At circuits going wrong.
Is this what happens to distinguished poets, presidents and accomplished moms?
Who am I to stop the train shunting up and down,
Taking random routes in the labyrinths of memory,
Stopping at strange stations?
Who am I to wonder at all?

**

Ice cream days

Milling crowds,
Trickling ice cream,
Sticky fingers,
Ferrous wheels,
People jostling,
Friends laughing,

A cloud of silence,
Melting ice cream,
Sticky fingers,
Creaking knees,
Fading Tees,
A forty watt bulb,
A remote control button.

*******

Notes
"Who Am I to Wonder?" was published in Indian Voices, Vol One, Fortytwo Bookz Galaxy. Mumbai 2011. (Part of her unpublished trilogy, “A Caregiver’s  Angst”)

More by this author in The Beacon:
Man and Nature –Mind (or a virus?) the Winner?
NEW FICTION: Remembrance-II
SNAP SHOTS

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Pamela Philipose
July 18, 2020 at 12:59 pm

Girija you write for all of us…What are we?

Reply
- The Beacon
  August 11, 2020 at 6:09 pm
  
  Thank you Pamela & for the extrapolation too..
  
  Reply

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