Lost Grace Poem by Sachidananda Panda

For Heaven's sake…!
Let me not answer weird questions
How do you do..? What about this and that?
Let you call, am worn out or a wily brat
For am torn, running from pillar to post
Chasing the dreams or a fancied ghost
Of a cause, a craze, with a bovine look
A mannered machine or a phlegmatic brook
For a while; let me breath free
Stoic though, let me count the fallen tree.

Let the Bereaved wings smoothen fast
Visit the backyard, map the trodden track
Let me resurrect the cornered sketch
Framed smiles long chaplet wrap
Fondly ask; how they colored, times spent
A pink, a red or the seven shed
Do they revere or repent now
Shall surely seek; an answer somehow.

Let me look at the tiny tots
A babe, a toddler, a stripling adult
Wanton shrills may assuage a while
Icy moments and pleasure juvenile
Remind me of the evening flock
A shout, a scream, or run amok
A frog, a freak or a queer move
Let me hide, at the orchard groove.

Shall tell'em lifes's lessons learnt
Of friends, of foes, and fingers burnt
A trial, a taste, when tumbled hard
Of clustered deceit, a crafty niggard
Swanky Swarm of modish beau
Perfidious smiles carry poison new

Let me return to the lane forlorn
Have a sit under the tree banyan
Grey hounds with tripod wise
Shall soak under the moonlit night
Find the friends old but new
Open my heart for moments few
Shall share the story untold yet
Life's misery and the endless wait

Let me find fun in the boughs broken
Fishing net or in cork wooden
Stumps made of bamboo sticks
Slider spin or sandy sleek
All I can shall do again
Roll and rise and fall and feign
The sacred soil's clarion call
Let me fill the weathered hall
Evening ‘kirtan' the ‘Mandi' space
Let me re-collect the lost grace
That's the place of sublime solace
let me find the Lost Grace.