Those Misty Years Poem by Hindukush Ojha

Yes my friends, yes...
With gumboots drumming
As we trekked
In the mist,
Those grassy glades
And distant noises,
Of someone coming
But invisible yet,
A class mate...
Perhaps, who also
Started late.
A forest's silence,
That quiet trudge
Some cricket sounds
And nothing else.
Old age:
It seemed
To, suddenly creep,
When mist drops,
Like waxy beads...
On the lashes hung,
Every now and then
They mildly stung
And had to wiped clean
By the back
Of the hand.
An innocent daffodil,
By the side of the road
Yellow and pink,
With a heavenly glow
Got trampled upon
By, black like slugs,
Those rubbery boots
One had to lug...
Into which,
Some ingenious leech
Has smuggled itself
Inside the socks...
And out of reach
To suck out blood
So painlessly
So copiously.
An odd earthworm,
Wriggles out slow
Like a dull student,
From a knotted bow...
These errant boys
Had tied it so
Their fingers still gluey
From the milk
Of the
Hermaphrodite...
Which they wipe upon
The colourful cloth
Of umbrellas,
They wield like spears
And what fun to discover
Water, rush up clear
By poking with their metallic ends
Small bore wells into the ground
Yes my friends, yes,
Those misty years
Flow back again,
From the mountains...
Like an echoing sound.