Song of Thyrsis by Philip Freneau

I have always loved this poem.


Google tells me that Thyrsis was a shepherd in Virgil's Seventh Eclogue, who lost a singing match against Corydon. Virgil was a Roman poet, Corydon was a Greek shepherd. He must have been pretty pissed off losing to a farmer. But here's the poem.

By Philip Freneau

THE TURTLE on yon withered bough, That lately mourned her murdered mate, Has found another comrade now— Such changes all await! Again her drooping plume is drest,         5 Again she ’s willing to be blest And takes her lover to her nest. If nature has decreed it so With all above, and all below, Let us like them forget our woe,         10     And not be killed with sorrow. If I should quit your arms to-night And chance to die before ’t was light, I would advise you—and you might—     Love again to-morrow.

We Write to Fight Memory

Writing to someone closes the physical space between two people. Words fill that space. The written word has always carried more weight than the spoken word because "writing fights memory - we write so that we don't forget".

The person who said this was named Frédéric Bruly Buabré. I bought this postcard of a painting by him when I was on a student exchange program in Switzerland last summer. I managed to drag a few friends to a museum called "Collection de l'Art Brut" in Lausanne, which houses artwork (paintings and sculptures of all kinds, made of all sorts of material, using all sorts of techniques) created by people with mental disorders - people who went insane (debatable what that means) or were retained in mental asylums. Since my visit, I have read up a lot about outsider art (art that lies outside the boundaries of normal culture) but I don't claim to fully understand even one thousandth of what it really comprises.

All I know is that this image, made by Frédéric Bruly Buabré - an Ivorian artist from the West Coast of Africa - is a memoir of a period of curiosity and introspection in my own insignificant little life. All his drawings are part of a larger spectrum called World Knowledge. It is said that he received a vision in 1948, that influenced all his work.

"On March 11, 1948, “the heavens opened up before my eyes and seven colorful suns described a circle of beauty around their Mother-Sun, I became Cheik Nadro: ‘He who does not forget."

La montée de l'humanité au ciel: un nuage

blanc figurant un < < enfant >> >, 2006

mine de plomb, stylo a bille et crayon

de couleur sur carton

16,2 x 10,7 cm

Photo: Amélie Blanc

Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne

Translation from French:

The rise of humanity to heaven: a white cloud contained a < < enfant >> >, 2006
graphite, ballpoint pen and pencil
color on cardboard
16.2 x 10.7 cm
Photo: Amelia Blanc

Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne

How little I understand about what goes on in his mind, and how much I wish I could. They were running an interview of this charming, happy African man in a corner of the museum on a television set, and I memorized his words and scribbled them down before I could forget. In explanation of one of his paintings, he said (in his own language):

When the earth and sun make love, they create rain. All sorts of things (life) spring forth from the earth - children, trees, animals.

After some looking around, I stumbled upon this website: http://www.caacart.com/html/frederic-bruly-bouabre.html. If anything about this blog post interests you, then go ahead and explore some more. I give you my word, you won't be disappointed.

Floorboards

I can smell the wood,

Hear the floorboard creaking.

It's not loud but it breaks the silence.

Careful toes can't hide your weight

Finger-on-the-lips won't mask your gait

Woolly socks might choose your fate

That's why cats have it easy.

Padded paws,

And no sense of guilt.

White Sunday

Strangely cheery

Yet dully and dreary

Almost eerie;

A morning for thinking

And hot-tea drinking,

A morning for letting go softly,

Thunder sirens lightning

Headlights streetlights shoplights

Flash and howl.

Looking up at white, white skies,

Gray at the horizon,

Borders blending in my eyes.

A dark cozy house,

I cuddle up like a mouse

Behind a large window,

Safe and meek and quiet,

With a book,

I look on.

Japanese Professor

I'm watching my Japanese professor teach. He has put so much effort into this class. He knows exactly what to say and when to change slides.

He is holding a make-up lesson at 7pm on a Saturday, yet at least 50% of his students have turned up. The clicker that he uses to point at the slides and change them is faulty today; he pushes it twice, while talking about the impact of hurricanes on wages, but the slide doesn't change. He pushes harder, stalling with words, and it still doesn't work. Then finally, it does - before conking again. He half-laughs and shakes his head in clear unbridled frustration.

This happens so many times that he finally, just short of cursing, mutters to the class - I am not blaming you, I am just really ..

It works, and he swiftly changes the function of the device from clicker to laser.

Before conking again.

His frustration is mounting. He goes a little red and grits his teeth a little. He sighs and glances at the digital clock on the wall. Does anyone have any questions? he stalls. Comments? You two, seem to be chatting a bit, anything you want to add? Anyone else?

His hair starts standing straighter as he pushes the button harder and harder. Slowly his face goes red, then redder, until he is a tomato headed Japanese man comically posed, pressing a button faster and faster until it's a blur, and finally he bursts with a pop.

A squeak from the spot where he popped - Ok, take a break for seventeen and a half minutes!

Wanderlust Dust

St. Gallen

A Naive Travelogue

I arrived alone at the little Swiss town of St.Gallen. Loaded with a suitcase that weighed as much as I did, and armed with a laptop as well as a couple of handbags, I stood blinking in the scarce yet warm May sun outside the railway station, gleefully soaking in the success of arriving. I remember feeling like this was how all beginnings should feel - exciting, unfamiliar, and waiting to be conquered.

Not completely oblivious to the extreme German atmosphere around me - faces, signs, phrases, even the coughs and sneezes - I looked around trying to figure out how to get a ride to my new address. I managed to get a cab (which I was to discover overnight was the most expensive way of getting around) and was driven to what was to be my home for the following month. After a detour to the university so I could register myself and collect my keys, I tumbled out of the cab onto the pavement at 44, Roschacherstrasse.

In a pile of limbs and luggage and a puff of smoke and dust, I stood looking up at the five storey building as my friendly non-English speaking lady cab driver zoomed off, leaving me with a slight pit in my stomach. This building had no lifts, and I had to get up 125 stairs, rounding a corner at every 25 stairs, with a landing at every 50. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that looking at my luggage then at the building over and over was not going to get me anywhere. So I grinned at myself as convincingly as I could, and launched myself at the building door.

It was much warmer inside. I barely managed to slip my mammoth 4 foot by 5 foot by 4 foot suitcase in when the door slammed behind me. And then, I began what I still recall as the one of the most excruciating climb upwards on stairs. It was like carrying a second human being - another me - up the stairs, and I weighed 50 kgs. It took me 45 minutes to get all my stuff up. I sat outside the door, panting, heaving, feeling like all the contents of my chest would spill out of my body and go tumbling down 5 storeys. Not wanting to climb down again to retrieve them, I sat balled up, trying to catch my breath. My rasping echoed unashamedly throughout the corridors. It slowed down after about five minutes, and finally stopped. With one more deep breath and my heart still pounding, I went into the apartment.

It was huge. There were 7 large bedrooms, a kitchen, a hall, two washrooms, and a laundry area. I went into the first room, and I was in love. It was furnished, but that wasn't the basis for my shallow love - the view was breathtaking. I could see green meadows on hills, the roofs of old buildings and homes, the clock towers of a couple of churches, and the never ending sky. I sat, tired, happy, probably jet lagged, and connected to the internet to inform my family that I was safe.

St. Gallen

Then I began exploring. Barefoot, I peered into nooks and crannies, cleaned, rearranged,

mused, re-rearranged. My body had adjusted to the temperature by then and I realized it was colder than I thought. It was also 2pm, which meant stores would all be shut within three hours. I began setting up my room, admiring and frowning and holding at arm's length the relics left behind by the previous tenants, all the while glancing whimsically at the orange curtains that filtered tilted sunlight into my room.

The floor rumbled. I paused, then continued setting up. It rumbled again. The third time, I realized that the buses passing on the road were causing the rumbling in the very foundation of the building. This feeling of the floor vibrating momentarily was to become a familiar sensation that I began to associate with the warmth and comfort of that apartment, rather than something scary and tremulous.

I decided to step out and get some food. I didn't want to wait for the others to arrive because it could be pretty late by the time they did, and I was too hungry anyway. With keys, some cash and a cell phone, I stepped out of the building without a map. It was far easier going down all those stairs. But as I did, I wondered at myself and how I managed to drag all that weight up. These stairs were ultimately a majority of the exercise I did whilst sampling all the breads and cheeses ever made on earth.

Out in the chill, I began walking aimlessly. Aimlessness is delightful. I knew my address, and I didn't want to know any more - I was eager to lose myself in this new place. And so I walked, and walked, and walked until I was certain I was quite lost. I wandered into a grocery store - Coop - and picked up bread, milk, cheese, yogurt; the other grocery store was Migros, which was a lot cheaper, and I eventually shopped there. Here, I befriended a nice Italian shopkeeper who helped me choose the best basil leaves from the selection. And then, at my 6th attempt at finding an electronic store, I discovered "M-Electronics" where I bought a converter plug to charge my laptop. I thought I was set.

I strolled through the streets, back streets, shops, lanes - and since I had gone through them once, my brain had absorbed as much as it could about the new environment. It was hard to stay lost once I had already landmarked familiar areas, although I didn't know it while I was doing it.

Marktplatz, or Marketplace, is situated more or less at the heart of St.Gallen. It is an arrangement of chocolateries, bakeries, wine and cheese stores, cafes and homemade on-the-go baked food stalls. Then there are a couple of large malls too, with branded goods, electronics, organic fruits and vegetables, flower shops, and the usual. Scattered among these are restaurants - ranging from bratwurst stalls to authentic Mexican, American, Turkish Italian restaurants, and combinations of the three. I walked through it, back to 44 Roschacherstrasse, feeling that lovely combination of air-chill and warm-rays on my skin. It tingled happily.

I fumbled with the keys and pushed through the glass door that had slammed loudly behind me a few hours ago. I carried my grocery bags up those 125 stairs, beginning to like the familiar smell of basil and tomatoes that came from the house on the third floor. I'd always linger on that landing a moment longer before climbing further. It was like a milestone, and a pleasant (and much needed) resting stop. I went into the apartment and locked it from the inside. After setting my grocery bags on the kitchen table, I went to my room, stood in front of the mirror, and looked myself square in the eye. I was tired, but satisfied - no, happily satisfied. It was 8pm, and the sun was just beginning its journey down.

There is a particular angle of the sun's rays, and it invites a pensive bird call - a chirp that sounds decidedly uttered towards a single, specific direction. When this angle of the sun's rays falls in my vicinity, then no matter where I am, I feel like I know everything there is to know. And this was one of those moments. I laughed at my naïveté then, and I laugh at it now. All I had achieved so far was a few pine cones from my long walk and a vague Italian shopkeeper-friend. Yet I was invincible even against myself and there was so much more to see, to learn, to do, before I could consider myself a contributor in any way to the world we live in.

I distinctly remember feeling, knowing - in that small moment, in a small city, being a small person, that I could do anything.

Interlaken

I'm a Tourist in my City

This time, I don't feel like I owe my reader an apology for using a cliché in my title. Because clichés are good at expressing a collective repetitive feeling and they deserve credit for never holding a grudge for being used, overused or misused.

I can't count how many times in the past three years I have passed a tourist - denim shorts, branded shades, big backpack, camera, wisps of hair left to the mercy of wind or heat, and partially scrunched up eyebrows. And of course, the quintessential big map blowing in the wind, hastily folded and unfolded and stuffed into a back pocket over a hundred times. When they stop to ask me for directions, I realize two things - one, I look like I belong to this strange place and am approachable for this reason when directions are needed; and two, I almost always know exactly what path they need to take to reach their destination. Then we smile and wave goodbye, and I continue walking in the real world, while they explore the island excitedly for a few more days, and then go home to some other country, far away.

I can't count how many times in the past three years I have passed a tourist and wished I was him or her, without a real-world care, here only long enough to fall in love with the good side of Singapore and appreciate it's beauty - but not long enough to find out the things they hate, the things that are ugly and just as real.

Even though things have changed for me on this tropical island, and even though I now like leaving my wisps of hair for the wind to blow or sweat to cling to, I'm only just starting to call it home. Because there's a sense of freedom, choices, responsibilities - all the things that a tourist is limited to by virtue of the amount of time he or she can spend here.

But the last time I flew home and had to fill out an immigration card, my pen lingered just a moment longer than usual over the words "Country of Residence". They seemed to be raising an eyebrow at me, not mocking, but half-curious, waiting for me to write an answer so they could be stamped by an Immigrations officer and filed away forever.

Of course I still wrote India.

An Undaunted City

The city rages on, undaunted by last night's furious rain.

That rain pelted on my windows last night like countless tiny fists begging for sanctuary.

Those fists are tired now, they are pelting lightly on the same window panes, only rapping lightly with weak knuckles.

I nearly opened my window just to let them in and rest.

But that would have meant welcoming the howling wind inside as well.

And the wind was just a haunting menace that wouldn't let me sleep.

So I left half the window open and some grateful drops sprayed in, while the rest tumbled towards the ground and ended their miserable fall.

As I look out at the city, it rages on, nothing is changing on the ground as everything is changing in the sky.

Majulah Singapura! - Haiku (An Attempt)

I cheer silently.
Majulah Singapura!
It's my freedom too.

Desk Job

4.37pm

Eyes ageing.

Head throbbing.

Mouths yawning.

Nuerons dulling.

Phone ringing.

Hello?

Paper rustling.

Stapler stapling.

Pencil tapping.

Mouse clicking.

Ink spilling.

Oops.

Voices fading.

Chair creaking.

Door squealing.

Fan whirring.

Clock ticking.

Sighs.

Boss calling.

Ready?

No.

I'm not answerable

To anyone.

4.39pm

Calm After the Storm

Sometimes things go on and on, one after another, like the effect of a fallen bicycle on the entire bicycle stand, like dominoes. 


Things are loud, moving too much and too fast, bright, and annoying. People are in and out, money flows fast, disappointments and missed appointments are somewhat inevitable.

But the storm passes.You're only handed as much as you can handle, and things will stretch only till you can take it. 

There is comfort in the certainty that this is nature's way.

Wrong Side

I've grown up following the rules. Stayed on the right track as a child, in school, wanted to be approved by those I looked up to, those I studied under, and as I progressed, those I worked under. It's natural to seek approval from people around you - or so I thought. 


What I have realized on a day when I'm feeling the lows is that if you don't have your own approval, nothing you're doing means anything.

If you think you knew that already, think again. If your efforts seemed right to you when someone else blew them off, can you continue to believe your efforts were right?

Today, I woke up to rain, a dark room, stomach cramps, and an e-mail saying that I had disappointed someone. When they hit you all at one go, no matter how small the nails are, they make a sharp dent. 


You can't help thinking that your God woke up on the wrong side of His and Her bed. It can't be me getting out of the wrong side of my bed because it's up against a wall and only has one side; and if this is the wrong side then I'm getting down from it every day unless I move my bed to the middle of the room. 


And that's probably against Feng Shui principles.

Zeh ya'avor.

The Goddamn Movies

They can ruin you. The movies can ruin you because they romanticize everything - be it poverty, terrorism, the US presidential elections, diamonds, or sex - of which only the last two can be romanticized albeit marginally so, because you could be talking about blood diamonds and loveless sex, or rape.

Our minds are impressionable. Impressions are made far more easily than they are broken, and they are made on everyone. Impressions are like clay moulds that keep denting and reshaping themselves.

In an era where the ill effects of pornography are visible on the ogling faces of 13 year old boys, we've begun to think about our lives like movies, with our sorry selves being the protagonists and all the important people in our lives playing supporting roles (don't forget to include them in the credits). 


We make believe to feel better, which is an old strategy, but applied differently today: in the older days, make-believing meant fantasizing your hopes, and drawing them towards yourself by as much strength as your mind could muster. Today, it means conjuring up obstacles and breaking them down, and making tiny little things out to be so huge that unless there's a hero to slay the dragon, the helpless lady in the tower can hardly climb out.

It's easier to live in a romanticized world because it makes things seem less drastic and life-threatening. Perhaps that is a good thing to the extent that we don't go berserk and dysfunctional at every tragedy that hits; in fact, this romanticizing can actually be helpful in such cases. But as with most things, the curve dips at some point, and the benefits decrease as the cost grows - romanticizing important issues is wrong.

Take a chill pill, you'd think; movies are just for entertainment. I agree. I love watching them. I laugh, cry, criticize and roll my eyes to my heart's content. But I try hard to make sure I don't forget that they are stories. There are a lot of people out there who do.

Good movies, in my opinion, are those that leave a lasting message. Movies that convey a point, or remind you of reality, or that just stay in your head because you could relate to them so well. There are as many happy endings as sad ones, but not in the movies - in the movies, there are only (I concede, mostly) happy endings, and this can be a misrepresentation of real life.

And if our lives are indeed like the movies, then we need to know who to finally credit, when not to pull a trigger, when to wipe off hidden tears so that they don't show when the lights come on, and when to laugh at ourselves in the short lived saga that is this life.

'I...live my life as I would like it to be...like a novel.' - Isabel Allende

Things I Can't Write In My CV

My professor stopped me after I opened the door for her and asked me what my name was, and memorized the spelling. I smiled for an entire minute.

I gave $10 to an ex-convict and bought two key chains - one was rubber 8-ball and the other a big yellow smiley face.

My instinct about how my grandparents are feeling, even when I'm in another country, is always right.

My hands have a healing touch. It's not my fault. They can calm hysterical sisters and hysterical children down, and those are the two categories of people that get very hysterical.

I have clarity about how I feel.

Small things upset me far more than big things ever could.

I'm very good at moving furniture around to optimize space in a room.

I'm compulsive about cleanliness and organization.

I agree with Holden Caulfield when he says that movies can ruin you. They really can.

My sister is the most precious person in the whole world.

My decisions might be arbit, but I always follow them through, and they always lead to something good.

I've cheated and I've lied. Never meant to harm anyone, but still done it.

My Karma is unbelievably on the mark. Always.

I know Yoga.

I forget stuff pretty easily.

I can get along with anyone.

I'm kinky.

I will never steal office stationery even though stationery is my single biggest weakness. But I might overuse it.

I have a jealous side that never defeats my practical side.

I never put on weight on my legs.

I think size matters.

Hampi

It's a funny name for a place, but it sounds all right to an Indian.

This is not about Hampi- you can find out everything you want on the internet. This is about that odd experience which isn't odd per se, but makes you think. Anyone who loves to travel knows what I mean.

I met a strange woman in my travel to this alfresco museum of the world, this natural heritage site of everyone's most careful preservation - she was from Rajasthan, which is way up north of Hampi. She was a gypsy, trying to sell anklets for 800 bucks to passers by, especially the white (and mostly stoned) ones. I went closer and picked one up (it was lovely - with shells and beads running along its length) and I asked her how much. She said 30 bucks. I exclaimed, you were just yelling 800! And she said, you are from where I am, you see right through me.

And there began again the old introspection of life and how we're better or worse off though we all rise from the same ashes. Do we really? How has a lady from the deserts of Rajasthan, which is fast gaining its repute as a tourist destination, found her way to a little heritage village in South India, and made a living from rings and bells? Her childhood was spent in the scorching sun, learning to spin and sew and count money before she could write her name (if she could write at all); and mine was in the shelter of a home and school where the most menial task I ever performed was setting the table, grudgingly so.

And no, I was never out in the sun for longer than necessary - if I had, I'd have gone as brown as this wrinkled old woman...who was by now, tying a third anklet on me and saying how lovely it looked on my fair skin - something that must have been demanded of her by society that she couldn't give. North India's prejudice for fair people is so deep-rooted that it reflects even in my family, which claims to hold the torch of liberalism. It does, in so many ways, but not all. The ones who are actually liberal don't make a fuss about it because their actions speak louder.

I thought more than I saw in Hampi, and fell in love with Paulo Coelho again. Reading his book just added to the romance of this forgotten kingdom.

I bought 7 pairs of anklets from her.

Monsoon

The rain outside my window is lashing past in horizontal lines, with sporadic puffs of mist. 

Winds are banging doors and knocking articles off-balance. I can hear things crashing in other homes too.

I have never witnessed monsoon fury of this magnitude in my life.

Can this tiny, presumptuous, self-sufficient, seemingly unperturbed island really take so much rain? There are only 655 square kilometres. 


I think it too might be starting to wonder if its perfect roads and banks and offices and drainage system can really handle the wrath of this monsoon.

Baggage

I saw a kid going to school yesterday. He was about three and a half feet tall, by my best estimate. And his school bag could not have weighed less than 5 kgs. It was sagging with weight and splitting at the seams with bulkiness, and its straps pressed into his small, fragile child shoulder blades- a giant bird with claws digging into his shoulders, landing all its weight on him and trying to take him down. I suddenly realized that the sling bag I was carrying was nearly 3 kgs heavy, and pressing rather viciously into my shoulder blade too.

Ma once gave me a pearl from her treasure of wisdom. She said, have you noticed how, while travelling from one place to another on a bus or train, some people hold on to their bags in their hands or on their backs? They might as well put them down while they are on the move, and pick them up when they reach their destination, but they resolutely clutch their baggages and add weight to their bodies, and themselves.

The metaphor extended, according to her, to the concept of leaving set your troubles down when you sleep - that just before you melt into your dreams, put all your worries, troubles and hassles on a shelf, and don't let your precious sleep be disturbed with unfair blame and thoughts that it doesn't deserve to be disturbed with.

There's a reason babies sleep the way they do: they don't ponder about things they can't control.

Big Yellow Cheese Moon

It looks surreal. A big round yellow pin-up in the sky, with small imperfections on it, like blemishes on a face. 


Blemishes on perfection, just a reminder that it might always be so. I saw it last night. 


We find change and perspective in things larger than ourselves.

We don't live very long, so things have to move in bursts sometimes.

Lava Lamp

It felt like a movie.

Her lava lamp was orange. It cast an orange glow over the entire room. Globs of wax in it moved up and down, slowly, floating, hitting one wall and moving unperturbed towards the another, only to be gently self-pushed in a tangential direction again. Their lazy fluency was fascinating. Big gooey bubbles of all sizes, bumping and moving along, like lots of people slowly hitting each other and continuing to move without a complaint. Maybe she should have bought a blue one. A blue glow would have been lovely.

She continued to watch it shine and drift lazily. She wished she could go inside it and trap herself into one of the little bubbles, and watch the world from atop the bookshelf, from inside the lava lamp - and if her bubble slowly stretched and eventually performed mitosis, then she would stretch with it, stretch gracefully, arching, until she slowly got divided in the middle, and became two small replicas of herself, one in each bubble. There could be many of her floating around inside the lava lamp, just like that, watching the apartment from a corner, people coming and going.

She shook her head from side to side to clear it, and sipped her strong black tea. She could feel it slipping down her throat, like a small stream of water on the floor would slip along the surface - she could feel it flowing gently, soundlessly, into her stomach, and soothing her. It had a distinct flavour. It sent a shiver up her spine. The breeze in her hometown did that to her. It was a shiver she waited for, invited, looked forward to, anticipated - like waiting for a person with more power, with the power to pleasure her insanely for just a moment, and then take it all away and tease her from a distance.

I'm drifting again, just like the wax globs, she thought, taking another sip. She shifted her gaze from the perfect lava lamp to the scene outside her window. A mosque began it's daily call, and she watched a few birds flying into the sun. It was quiet, except for a single baby's wailing, almost haunting in its loudness and helplessness. There is no time like evening - the last hour of light before dark, the last breath of a long and tired day, the last flutter of the sun's eyelashes before they close for the night. She watched as it got darker, and the lights in the buildings came on everywhere, one by one. The city still looked beautiful. From the top floor of a building, any city looks beautiful.

The mosque finished its prayer and the silence that followed it resonated into the dusk. The baby stopped wailing and finished off its complaints with a prolonged gurgle. She continued to sip her tea, blinking slowly, seeing everything clearly from behind her glasses. She played a strain of Billy Joel on her laptop, and continued to watch the city wake up for the night. The trains must be so crowded. The clubs must be getting ready for the teenagers - college goers in their first year, waiting for a release without knowing why, doing things they didn't understand and being carefree with the excuse that these years only come once. They aren't wrong, but they will regret some things later. 

Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong that week. All the promises she could have made to herself and broken, she had made to herself, and broken. A few bright spots, like plankton in a dark shallow sea, had come along over that dark week, but they were short lived. Like fire flies. Like shooting stars. Like a bulb with a fuse. She felt like she had sunk to to bottom of something jelly-like, and was yet to begin her journey up. She knew it wouldn't be so hard. She knew she would get there, and be all she had to be - it was dark, yet there was solace in that sunset, that lava lamp, that black tea, those city lights. 


How cliché. 


How true. 


That entire surreal moment encapsulated in the evening, the fading light, the liquid, the silence.

She returned to her desk, checked her mail, rustled a few papers, and began working again.

The lava lamp continued to glow.

One Side Only

Some things look strange

When they’re one side only.

Take my gold fish with a fin on one side –

The other side, lonely.

A face that has a smile

On one side only.

Or half an ocean wave or half a leaf –

Or half a hen, or half joy-half grief.

Sometimes, when my mind is in conflict,

I wish it had one side only.

~inspired by Kirry~