A love note from Galle

Forbidding walls speak of pride and fear

rooftops cascade into languid courtyards

where conversation shards are gathered

by ghosts with amputated voices

artisans with the full weight of their humility

in soft voice dignity detail the timber and pigment 

of lifetime and moment

the tinkle of cutlery and crockery 

drains out of elegant eateries 

tiptoe away along shocked cobbled stones 

frozen with noonday heat

and the slow step of a passerby

bypassing the narratives of the forgotten;

the afternoon is sliced with lime-fragrance

love climbs improbably ladders

only to be consumed by insatiable reptiles;

there are words and there is silence

the unplanned pregnancies of our ignorance

complement the curves of propriety;

I take it all in and breathe it all out

swallow words as voice tapers off 

as moment defers to reflection;

you crash unwittingly through 

debris and fairytales,

stand before me and in a matron's voice 

object and deny in practiced firmness

and then, as though to alleviate sorrows imagined,

smile and indulge in the play of fingers --

those distant relatives of a heart

by decree of reason, jailed. 

Love and patience

The one and the same

it is not a country

that to the impatient

offers citizenship, no

love is as close as faraway

as immediate as never 

but alas!

in ignorance 

laced with conviction

which in turn with doubt is soaked

we write lexicons:

love is such and such

so too patience: such and such;

and open out hearts to bliss

and to insanity our minds.

Snakes and Ladders

A favorite game 

came through poetry and innocence

was companion to movie dates

that sudden shower 

reminding us that droughts do end;

it was silent witness to silences

this game that's so ancient 

that we forget easily

it never was meant to end

so we can move through encumbrance 

chase and flee

and through it all

at improbable intersections

arrive.