An Aged Shadow

One day,

I see a shadow,

Pass by a distant door,

Padlocked, wrinkled and moth eaten,

Both of them.

The glum old man,

My shadow of that monsoon afternoon,

Watches by a corner,

As a sunshine plays with the rain.

A silent shroud of silence,

Lies over the afternoon,

Like the flies,

Dead and gone,

On his chest of many buried secrets.

A hat,

A broken harmonica,

And a few stolen memories,

Soak in a solemn stupor,

Of a melted conscience.

A greying riverbank,

He just lets time pass by,

To watch that rainbow smile over the sunshine,

Again and again,

Again and forever.

We storytellers lived,

Till time passed us by,

Like moths circling a candle of dust,

Into a whirlpool of the world,

And they say,

He did die smiling.

-Palash

Jan’14, Lumding.