5. The Moon Fairylady

The darkest heat was descending over the western sky,
And the birds prepared to gather their straw and fly home to their kids.
It was a beautiful afternoon in the valleys.
The quaint drops of green were at their blooming best,
the soothing raiment of nature was a verdant soliloquy.
The skies were slowly turning into a beautiful golden blue.
The cry of dove in the air,
Brought about a feeling of lightness.
There was a tree in the near distance,
Golden with its magniloquent leaves.
The frail afternoon was to be replaced by night.
Kids played in its aftermath,
A lonely kite,
A menagerie of children in the shadowy light.
The hue of the sunset had brought with it the fragrance of love.
Far away maidens sighed,
In wait of their handsome prince,
Some cried,
For built in the zeitgeist was their souls,
In the form of lost memories.
Nature yawned,
The heat and collage of the day was over,
It was time to relax,
A furtive glance towards the stoic past,
A half eyed look ahead into the sylvan quietus of life.
It was time to shed the folds of crop and green,
And merge into the golden carpets of love and its leisurely dream.

Whilst the vagaries of summer melted into the supple autumn with a halcyon hue,
The world prepared to rest their woes.
Only a boy stay awake in silence.

The ball of fire dissipated a vibgyor of colours as it submerged beyond the realms of the horizon,
But as darkness was beginning to grow,
Another beautiful shining love illuminated the sky.
He watched, bathed in the silver moonlight of the moment.
The scinitilla of reflection that emanated from the crisp leaves debouched from the darkness.
It mirrored a blend of aurum and argent into the naive innonence of his eyes.
A few other leaves swayed in the evening breeze and crumpled to dust,
Some blew about for an entire minute in the flirting winds.
Through the branches of the trusty Elm he continued to see fragments of the silvery Orb,
That which time had left behind, and lost,
In the myth of reality.
And in its midst, then, he saw her.

She was a flowing tinge of silk, a shadow in the glitter of the white.
He remembered the story that his grandfather used to tell him as a kid.
He was no more, but the tale had remained with him.

Once upon a time a king used to love a girl.
But he was proud and kept her captive.
Whilst her heart yearned for her love, her unknown prince,
The king wanted to wash away her dreams.
One day he brought three pills of immortality.
That night when he offered one to her,
She beguiled him and took away all three.
But one was not what three were meant for,
And out she flew into the night sky.
The king tried to catch her, but little could he do as he could not fly.
Since then she has been perched atop the highest mountain,
The unfathomable glimmer of light.
Sitting on the plinths of the unreachable,
Rising with the darkness of every night.

But he knew what others did not, he could feel his heart beat rapidly tonight.
The moon shone the brightest on the eighth day of the eighth lunar month,
When it was time for the golden harvest,
For the springs to start flowing again,
And the creeks to fill.
When it would be the moment of her prince to arrive.
She would smile, and that be her most beautiful day of the year.
He watched all this, and more, with reticent eyes,
Silence which was disrupted only by the occasional screech of an owl.
The irenic ambience waited in anticipation for the spectacle of a lifetime.
Moments dragged by, a bricolage of rustling of leaves and the silvery wisps of smoke.
And then as the moon was at its highest, time froze;
As if cradled in the equanimity of love.

The moon and I met like the confluence of two rivers;
And meted out into the undying sea.
The silence of the moment reverberated across the horizons of time,
Her oneiric eyes lost in the fathoms of my mellow fruitfulness.
And then, we kissed.

But night could not remain static for long,
And like a travelling calcavade it moved on.
In the far reaches, laughter echoed from families of the present,
And it seemed like a time to get together and celebrate with near and dear ones.
On a nigh pond a fleet of swans glided smoothly in the wake of joy.
As the darkness began to fade to be replaced by the icy morning of pride,
He walked away in the freedom of his newly found love.
Close to his home, a silver maiden, the daughter of a merchant, awoke with the rising dawn.

And I watched all, from beginning to end of the Fall.
My sere hands, now withered, lifted into a smoke of form,
And with all the life left in me,
I blessed him.

As the sun rose over the eastern line of infinity,
It washed away the traces of silver that outlined the sky.
I would rise again another day, another year,
Like the phoenix of autumn if dreams could fly...

Hirak.

1. Snow Flower [PICK]

It was time when the drops of snow melted into clear fluid,
In the distance the little bits of white on the leaves
Colligated into bundles of more snow,
Which dissolved and submerged into the whiteness of the ambience.
The darkest winter was about to subside,
Leaving behind the plinths of half-melted ice,
And nature which had been a Croesus so long
Was about to be stripped naked off this paradise.
Often in opportune places there were footmarks of where men had walked
And rested; At other places boulders lay in wait for salvation.
The rhadamanthine rules of the winter were to be followed, they knew.
For winter was nature’s doyen.
The snow capped peaks in the horizon lines reflected the light of the setting sun proudly into the panes of some insignificant house in the valley.
The streams gained more and more life as the winter days wore off,
And flew with sheer pride and ambition furthermore.
And in some far countries birds prepared to return,
The flowers which had so long been snow scared prepared to bloom again,
Time prescinded; The specious snow swept its vastness over the land,
And melted into everyone’s hearts as a picture of the highest order,
Imprinting itself as a wonder; and the whole world watched on.

Amid this serene beauty at oft unrepeated intervals,
Bloomed such a variety of beautiful flowers.
Be not cozened at their petals,
Pink blossoms on branches bending heavy beneath winter's last cry.
They were snow flowers.
Legend said when angels were sad at heaven in the winter,
They came down to earth and found drops of pink snow on the smallest branches,
Interspersed between the grey green leaves,
Sparkling as flowers of hope in despair,
Asserting a coup de grace of light to the dying.
But the flowers were about to be dissolved into the vast white,
For the season was at its end.
So when he came, he traveled hard, climbed the highest mountain,
But not a spot of pink he sighted,
His hands had been empty when he arrived,
And they were empty when he left.

As often happens, some things are best left unsaid.
As the story of the shepherd and the merchants daughter from a faraway land,
Which brought never happiness but pain and more pain,
The distance between them as vast as the deepest ocean,
The interval, the mightiest rain.
The young girl in the tropics once was mesmerized by the rain,
And the storm hit her that day,
Coying away her thrift life from her gently,
Just as the snow started melting from the vast expanses,
Her snow-white face lost color, slowly turning the colour of water – blue.
And the shepherd remembered the great legend of snow flowers.
She was his angel, like the snow, and the hope for her was the pink blossom
That could make her heart beat once again and bring the pink flush of her cheeks back.
He visited winter hence; He who belonged to the pastures;
He, who was a formless being; No one but a mere man;
He traveled to find the legendary snow flower.

But winter has never been recusant to the hands of man.
Whilst beauty is at its own end soft and breathtaking, in the other it is vibrant and proud.
The white was white all around.
He moved all across the expanse inch by inch in search of a speck of pink,
He explored every crevice every peak to find the flower.
He, formless, fought with passing winter.
The water started flowing from under his legs as he stepped on the sheets of ice and flakes of snow,
But like the lily which appears when snow recedes, he would not lose hope and go on.
A month went by in quick time as all the snow melted and left the land green and beautiful as ever,
The trees were more verdant than they had ever been,
The nature danced to the tunes of beautiful birds and the songs of larks.
Winter was now past; It was now time for spring.

He sat empty in the shade of an acorn tree, his sobs blinded by the cuckoos.
Seeing him cry an angel came and asked, “Why do you cry. Oh shepherd?”
“I cry for I could not find the snow flower to save my love.”
“Oh but the snow flower is not here, but in your pastures. Where there is already snow all around how can you see its flowers? You are a shepherd, if you had been in your fields, you would have seen the small bits of snow on the grass blade-tops or the tree branches refracting pink light. What business do you have here?”
He understood her words, he had not seen what he had missed close by.
He at once went back to his own fields and still,
There was there a single piece of grass which dazzled with the pink radiance.
He plucked it and headed for the merchant’s house.
As he entered, he wondered if she was there, if she remembered him still.
As his eyes met her, the time of a month evaporated into nothingness, and continued from the moment he had left.

Going to her he offered her the flower.
She smiled at him and touched his cheeks.
Said she “My love; I want to know,
How beautiful the snow capped mountains are,
When snow drizzles in the highest peaks,
Is it a wondrous sight?
Is it true, that snow is white?”
Said he, “My love, I wanted to find,
The snow flower, which would bring you to life.
I had eyes for the flower only,
The color of snow I did not see.”

It is not the snow which is a flower,
But snow itself is a garden of immaculate treasures.
And even today,
When the pink has melted into a colorless hue,
It reminds me of the shepherd and the dame.
The story that the snow carried away,
And whispered every year on Christmas’ day.
That is why we have colors on tree top pines,
To remind us of legendary colorful snow flowers,
And that’s why the angels quietly at night,
Come there to look at their families and departed ones.

And the blade of grass? It still lies in my heart,
Whence she was buried in a snowy cemetery,
Her last wish was to see me, I know,
For I was snow, once, but no more.

- Hirak.