If Poem by RAJ VIKRAM

If you go sometime,
ensure that your footsteps
don't rustle the dry leaves
lying all around the place
where I am asleep unaware.

I courted this sleep after
wrestling fruitlessly with
obdurate moments which
kept my eyes open always
as if to let me know something.

I know you may go after all,
for whatever we say,
impermenance is what this
life is all about always
and enigmatically so.

And I can't prevent you
for there is an inevitability
to the things that we experience,
though we may conjure up
dreams of immortality.

But in the if lies everything
the world of possibility
Amidst all the talk of helplesness
there still lies that threadbare
presence of hope.

You can decide not to go
Even if destiny strives to
make you a mere kite
which moves with its painfully
playful strings that are tangled.

Let us leave the intangibles
and for the moment think of
your staying back in
close proximity to my
being that throbs with your heart.

I may be asleep now,
but you know it is with a gut belief
that you will be here always,
when I open my eyes
and return from the gorge of sleep

At this moment when I hear
leaves crumble I realise
in my half awake state that
it is the time that is beating
a retreat with diminished pride.

If it comes and it is a surety
to take you aboard
hold yourself together
with the same intensity of
unyielding belief in permenance
of our age old togetherness.