Poems, Prisms… and Price
I
think I’m asleep… it’s the middle of the night
Within the deepest recesses of my mind
A wellspring spurts to life …
Thoughts jostling with each other in desperation
Like suffocating bubbles rising to the surface
To breathe and find their freedom
While I’m yelling, “Please queue up for heavens’ sake!”
On other nights
A light switches on…a workshop springs to life
Wherein I observe a jeweller strings thoughts
Plucked
from out the firmament
Into a necklace of pearls
Creating a new constellation in my night sky.
Sometimes,
An extra-terrestrial typesetter
Is
frantically working to a deadline
To get a publication to press
Most often,
The
mind is a furnace on fire
Where a cosmic wordsmith
Is
crafting contemplation into words,
Like swords, some sharp even double-edged
Doing what swords do best...
Whittling fellow humans down to sighs
Others, blunt butter knives spreading it thick
Making burnt toast look good.
I awake in wonder…
Who are these curious cerebral denizens?
Where do they come from? Why are they working within?
Who gave them permission?
Because I certainly did not… I’m fast asleep!
I’m clueless whence these thoughts issue
Cocooned in caverns of my mind
For a time unknown
Till on a day of their choosing – or, rather night
They mature, impatient to take wing.
Oh, what joy to serve as a channel for the cosmos
To craft its convictions into expression.
I don’t feel the author…. merely a prism
The conductor creating colours from cosmic light.
But neither light nor colours can the prism possess.
When strange celestial artisans
Apply my mind as their nocturnal workshop
To wrought thoughts into words
For no astronomical advance
For no publisher or, Pulitzer
For
the pleasure and privilege of sharing
To enkindle…envigorate… excite
To be savoured and appreciated,
It
is currency beyond priceless.
Are ‘my’ thoughts ‘n words even mine
To
claim proprietary rights over?
What chose me freely would no longer be free
To share universally
If enslaved and proclaimed exclusive by a prize;
If
traded like commodity for a price.
What was never mine…is not mine
And will never be mine.
©2020 Ranjan Kamath
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