Dear friend of my heart,

do you still love poetry as you once did?

the musty smell of old books and the profound silence of forests used to belong together in my mind. Love for literature and that for nature were indistinguishable from the mist that surrounded me.

I have come to feel that studying literature was not to my liking. I haven’t been able to return to books with that love. There are echoes of this romance somewhere… I know I will find you again… To you my first love:

The Forest in a Book (December, 2016)

pebbles in a brook
a brook in a forest
a forest in a book
the book begins to breathe
waking up and hopping around
in my room and with a joyous bound
through the open window
a swound above the ground
the forest pouring like an inky waterfall
like a wordy echo in those mountains
birds and birds oh birdie birdie bee
leaves a leaf a one-a two-a three
gleefully lost in the sound
of a forest in a book
a book in a poem
a poem upon your lips
your lips… upon mine

…this will perhaps take shape as a solipsistic surrender. Once again in the mist, burning to see. All that I have acquired is nothing but fuel for this fire that dances alone in the reign of darkness, in this liminal realm where touch lives. It is the place where life begins and where death begins. It is the mystery that obscures you from me, the schism that threatens to expand like the universe and separate us forever as islands of light drifting apart in a vast ocean of emptiness. This abysmal divide threatens our faith, but faith then becomes yearning, and yearning becomes a way of life.

How did we end up here? From our love of poetry to separation and yearning as the sense of this universe. I just want to feel it again. Don’t you?

a bit more color…

and a brook in a forest, and a forest in a book…

What has it been like for you, your relationship with poetry and nature? Did you ever wander off and find it all over again?

Eager to hear from you,

yours in remembrance,
Prashant