Desideratum, the Tawny Teak Chair…
I was decluttering my house of those amassed memories…
Worn out clothes, broken toys, torn books…
And some dried flowers buried in those senile dairies…
All that’s passé collected through years
while I was vindicating my soul
Then, I thought of cleaning the debris of my heart as well.
Sitting so calm on your tawny brown teak chair,
You stopped me, your daughter.
You said, it’s your father’s reminiscence,
It holds true as a slice of heirloom, an inheritance.
A hundred years old, timeless and perennial…
Not merely paraphernalia..
Not only a furniture, a piece of timber
“It will be there when I am gone”,
What you said, I still remember.
How you told me to retain all the memories, all wounds
And I am keeping them hitherto close to my heart.
All the clutter that’s faded and aged
Aged more than me.
There is only one clutter…bestowed, persistent…
Your tawny brown teak chair, Dad !
I would never be able to clean it up from my heart
You still seem sitting and smiling back at me from its grills.
You are perennial, so is your chair
Love is perennial, so is pain…
It can’t be felt until you live it when you lose someone
Someone as vital as your essence..
Then the imprints refuse to back-pedal…
And memories cease to fade…
Your tawny brown teak chair will never tarnish, as you said.
Love is as perennial as grass…
The grass keeps on growing beneath the dermis and clog stem cells…
Greener than usual, pricklier than thorns.
And you, Dad!
Rocking-a-bye, turning your neck back, you again smiled at me.
“I will not sell anything,” I refused the Kabadiwala.
Nothing is clutter, nothing is scrap”.
Desideratum…Desiderata…
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Glossary:
Kabadiwala : The scrap dealer.
Desideratum…Desiderata : Things or things that are essential (Latin).
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My mother is my life force. She flows in my veins, but my father is my cerebrum function. I think, sense and emote because of him. He stays in my heart and brain. He keeps me ticking, keeps me sane.
On this Father’s Day, I dedicate this poem to all the fathers of the universe who leave behind their quintessence in their progeny. This prose-poem is my homage to my father, late Daya Shanker Mishra who, in spite of not being physically present, is always around me in all my peaks and valleys.
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