Standing on the verandah, he was, among

The tangled nests of what were once the fir tree’s tresses

He stood, gazing wistfully into the open lawn.

Looking, yet not seeing

As he was living the sights at a distance beyond what his eyes could see

The rejection, the eventual deportation, the ignominy of it all and

The return home, dreams shattered.

Wanting, wanting, wanting, for a piece of paper.

The pen, it’s said, is mightier than the sword,

But isn’t it really the power of the written word?

Etching, embossing, capturing for all eternity

The ephemeral thoughts that pound the nerve cells of

Our brains

Begging, pleading, imploring as they dance through our heads

Save us, before we are lost forever and become only a fleeting glimpse

Save us, save us, save us, on a piece of paper.

Go through the daily toil and each dusk turns

To dawn until they both get mixed up, one flowing into the other.

Like little icicles hanging from a roof, dripping and wasting

Getting ever shorter, closer to death with each drop,

Yet beautiful and reveling in the knowledge

That they will be seen again, however arduous the path.

All this for that paycheck for which we eagerly await,

Feed me, feed me, feed me, with that piece of paper.

Mostly white, yet color blind to any imposition upon me,

Creating a kaleidoscope of human emotion from

The plain, the ubiquitous and the unsung black print-

Print, only recognizable on my white background, tousling

The tangled hair of your emotions.

Who am I? That-

Wrinkles not with age but with idly crushing fists,

I am, I am, I am, a piece of paper.

Don’t we all strive to go back from whence we came?

I will venture-

A piece of paper is much the same.

Birth, life, death and birth again, the tree, the mill, the discarded

husk of what it used to be.

Whether in solitude standing firm on its own, or

Whether in community with the myriad of brothers in a book,

Live on, live on, live on, you piece of paper.

Copyright ©2003 Sundaram Srinivasan

Poet’s comments:

I have attempted to capture 5 realities of life on “ A piece of paper” , the realities of

Failure

Creation

Toil

Racism and finally…

Life itself.