We are sons of soil and earth.
What is life
if not a never-ending chase of dawn and dusk?
To run in on one
only to be enthralled in the beauty of another and then,
run again
We are sons of soil and earth.
Yet do you realize it has been years.
Years since you last sat on a stretch of grass and not worried of stain and dirt.
Sat still on soaked mud
and looked at where the heavens met the earth and hope unfurled.
Our body is encaged in walls of bricks and concrete
like our hearts and mind, in confines of obligations and perception.
Our body is restless and restive; our heart,
raged and ravenous as it seeks an escape from all this terror
but finds none that it longs for.
Maybe it is that one last glimpse,
caught of light’s narrowest escape unfolding along the trails
of a faraway canopy,
or that of frail naked trees clad with rhododendrons
drenched in autumn’s first rain, enticing
as the newlywed draped in red and ravaging.
Or the grimly sight of a late winter night
that fills you with an ode of inescapable grief on one moment and on another,
an overwhelming ecstasy.
And yet you revel in flavors of both because
it is nearest to what you have felt of peace.
It is closest to what your heart has felt of freedom.
Freedom from all these walls of bricks and concrete and obligations and perception.
What is life
if not this beautiful transition of dusk and dawn?
We are born of darkness.
Darkness of the womb and our mother’s pitiful cry.
Our path languishing with horrors of joy and grief
what is life,
if not this subtle translation of pain and peace?
Verily
we are sons of soil and earth
and not these bricks and concrete.
©️ Rainman 2020
Authors note: ‘ambedo’ n. — a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details — raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee — which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life, a mood whose only known cure is the vuvuzela.
The title of this poem is neologism taken out of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows created by John Koenig, which coins and defines neologism for emotions that do not have a descriptive term.
The words are based on ‘feelings of existentialism’ and do not really find root in existing literature, although how does it make them short of any a word when they so perfectly picture what we really wish to portray. Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the poem.
