Wet Earth And Empty Hearts

My friend called from across the Pacific,

An epiphany he had, he said.

He had seen rumbling clouds in the Smoky hills:

Summer, through sheets of rain, had bled.

There was something in the rains, he cried.

I knew what he tried to mean.

For the lonely hills craft a spell in rains

My heart smiled – It was a place I too have been.

And a dreamer here gleaned the past,

A cloudburst on a sunny day -

Rainfed memories from the hills of past

Rainfed memories from faraway:

A walk in hail and swirls of clouds,

Waterfalls pumping blood in the hills.

Rubber boots clod through muddy streams

Yet, deep within, is an unsaid thrill.

The montage flows: a pied cuckoo from African shores

Fly with the monsoon winds from far,

And with the clouds, a vagabond trails

Lansdowne, Naldehra, Haridwar…

I pause the memories; they can go on for long.

Why this urge for the mounts again?

With rain in the hills, was there peace to be found?

Amiss in life, both now and then?

 

I knew the answer, we always do

Alps or Himalaya, they are all the same:

Solitude, peace for the broken hearts,

Melancholy for the pouring hills to tame

Perhaps, eventually, it is the mind that stands

Calm, in peace, a will of its own.

Until then, the hills are a shield

From life, its doubts, that are left unknown

Somewhere perhaps, a boy now stands

Amidst a city, in the stench and the din

He needs no hills, nor the washing rains

For he has found his peace, deep within…