I Wish...

For most of the past one year, after Covid hit India and I was confined at home, I felt a strange urge to write poetry, even as I continued blogging and writing other prose pieces. I say "strange", because I've always been less drawn to poetry than prose, and consequently have also read far less of it. But I pine for economy now - sparse words, bare image, silence. I can't bear to read voluminous books, watch long films, or sit through elaborate discussions these days. Exhaustion may be one reason for it; the desire for a clutter-free existence, another. I want to get rid of all clutter and just concentrate on essentials. 

What you see below is not a poem, but an articulation of the desire to write poetry (among other things... all of which I have no talent for)!

I just wanted to make a short post of this desire this month...

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I WISH

I wish I were a poet

Condensing feelings into neat little lines

That flow spontaneously down

Like a stream.

I wish I were a painter

Unleashing the demon within

In a riot of colours

On canvas or paper.

I wish I were a dancer

Swirling in vast open spaces

In joyous delight

Sheer poetry in motion.

But prose is all I have

Bare words woven together

Into unadorned sentences

Without metre or rhyme.