A Frightening Dream Poem by Savita Tyagi

A huge python crawls in dream again
Massive shadowy figure of long grey serpent
Moves with tremendous force in cold obscurity
From mythological memory I recall of Vasuki*
Shiva's faithful companion,
A garland of grace and beauty
Wrapped around his blue neck so gingerly.

Tonight he wasn't there
As an accomplice of ocean churning
For seekers of immortality
Tonight he was an ordained employee of death
In cold blooded merciless cruelty destroying,
Devouring all what was built with love and care.

Walls and bricks fall all around
Dust and smoke blind the vision
Choking me out of my breath
I stood there in darkness shaking and trembling
Oh! How I wished to save just a little nook.

A silent prayer, a wishful thinking
Echoed in fearful heart
Hope of a tiny dwelling to be spared
Amid the fallen debris of rocks and iron
His coils and fang will have mercy
For a little room where the most delicate
The most helpless of all
A little innocent life lies
Blissfully unaware of lurking danger.

Just then I break away from sleep
All apprehension of that fateful event stops
A sense of relief takes over
Akin to when an earthquake shakes every thing
But in a next moment of afferent sensation
When the earth becomes still
One feels himself alive again.

Fear grips my heart
A wakeful consciousness
Still disoriented
Entwined with truth and illusion
Haunted by the vivid memory
Of a terrifying, wretched moment
Struggles to regain and recompose.

For now all is calm in dark night
In quiet submission whatever was spared
Stirs back to life again
Cobra wraps in his coils whoever
Or what so ever it wishes to wring
And leaves the rest unscathed.