Train Journey Poem by Madhu Kailas

Transit of fleeting frames.
The world travels through window lens.

Tracks run moored to their seeds
like distant, but pressing drum beats.

I am part of the anatomy of a train ride.

Paddy fields stitched in a fresco quilt.
In their arms, quaint hamlets in irenic sleep.

Transmission wires girdle the sky. They come near
in the middle, and then move apart.

Distance tarries. Proximity swishes.

We all will alight at our stations. Predestined.

Meanwhile, morning swims in through the ground.
First, I sense the unseen artist at work.
Cadence of plods and splashes churn soft earth.

Then the fields float up as mirror lakes.
Amidst his handiwork of infant rice
I see him astride his plough.

I wonder at the journey of my fellow passengers.

The girl beside me wears a forgotten smile,
akin to the flaking, reminiscing clouds outside.
She smells like a new bride.

We are on road to see her Ma and Pa again.
In life we conserve capsules of past lives.
To visit, and revisit, and to grow back into old skins.

Right now, every moment is growing larger
and larger to fill our past, and bring it here.

Two little boys made of clay, shiny and naked,
chase a rooster to make it fly.

The rooster teaches them a trick to survive.
So they would not melt back to the earth in a hurry.