A Little Mongoose, My Childhood Friend Poem by Palitha Ranatunge

The little forest behind my old parental home
Sold out long ago, absent from my mind
Until I accidently encountered a tragedy
Of crime, a first grade crime
But not codified in human penal law,

There was a little pond filled with purest water
Like a sad face of a young maiden looking up
And it was partly covered with green lotus leaves
In the center of it always there was a blooming lotus
I knew not how many days one lived but one was always
There pretending to be shy and repenting for her beauty,
There was a tall but handy jack tree that garlanded with
Fruits that have ripen all the year but touched by
Only the wilderness and its mates; crows, squirrels and bats,
When passing by all over the floor beneath, bees swarming
Over the yellow jack fruits fallen and thrown from the top,
Silent fear always shivering in my spinal code
For I knew I had been watching by, Who? By a mongoose!
Its brownish body and the long tail I longed to touch
But I could hardly see its movements but only I knew
I had been watching through its tiny red sparkling eyes...


Old house gone and a skyscraper has erupted
With plastic and neon signs over the face and side
The young maiden was raped and burried
The shy lotus was robbed and sold
And all the greenery has wiped out, the birdies
With all there innocence have been extinct
From that part of the world.

And never, ever
Ask me about my little brown friend with curious red eyes
And its whereabouts
The tears I felt for him may not be dried away
Ever and ever in my life...