Middle mountain way
Journeys back through the ages
Lined with travellers
Day 100/365 – Morgan’s #DailyHaikuChallenge. Join in and link back to her blog
Tag: travel
New Possibilities #DailyHaikuChallenge
Wishing you all a very happy New Year and safe celebrations!
No signs can foretell
As we travel this journey
Moving with the year
Day 74 /365 – Morgan’s #DailyHaikuChallenge. Join in and link back to her blog
Thoughts like Blackbirds
Why are we going so fast? It’s like sitting
on one of those new sewing machines –
Trains rush by wishing they could fly
because blackbirds don’t come here anymore.
What are those black marks then?
They’re all smeared now – were they crying?
Is it the sky again, pretending tears like rain;
just like you did, or was that your dad?
We’ll soon be past those freckles up there. I told you,
there are no more blackbirds to peck at your soul,
no more ants because we only buy fresh –
those are good grains in that bread – eat up.
stains and sewing machines; they never went this fast.
I wish she could keep up with the window as we ride,
but time and oily marks appear inside of lopsided lenses,
inside of those the countryside flits by at 125 mph
and her tired grey eyes can’t take it; her silver
hair drops as she watches crop circles in the carpet.
I eat my sandwiches on scratched Formica, steadying
my coffee’s plastic rumble on the surface while inside
my heart breaks watching the sweeping insensitivity of old age.
Shah Jahan
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Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his favourite wife, Mumtaz. He longed to preserve the love that he had for her. With its creation, love, magnificence and memory has been preserved. I had the privilege of falling on the stairs inside that lead to the tombs proper on a visit – a treat from my dad while we were visiting family in India. I was not allowed to continue due to the risks – enabled by the shoe protectors that tourists have to wear. So I mooched outside taking photographs…these are not those, however.
Shah Jahan
She wilted and he slept for one year,
fading like the blush of twilight –
riches do not protect the human flesh
or soul –
death permeates even our innermost
love.
In dark dreams, grief struck aching bones
and tortured sinews,
surrounds of a heart heavy from drought,
until he was woken with a vision to transform
her death into beauty – as she was in life
so she shall be in slumber.
‘No more tear drops on cheeks
that pain compared to her touch,
but across the naked sky,
to prolong this innermost sorrow,
just the last one –
a gesture to sear my longing
in this lonely, mournful place –
the last cry will be affixed
vapour
laden with jewels and precious
splendour
to pierce the clouds
saddened and heaving constantly
as sorrow.
On the south bank, ribbons
of the Yamuna river will stare
at a true reflection of beauty
created from your passing –
it will remain a last kiss on the cheek
from my final tear as it rolls
through Agra.
Your splendour will ignite
a restful place, and make magical
this white opal – as opaque,
as my grief
and as magnificent
as you my love, Mumtaz –
soon we will sleep until we can
no longer, and we leave together
through the ghosted marble
of the Iwan.’
As it Comes 