A Photograph Poem by Namita Rani Panda

In a heap of cast away stuff in our store room
by chance I found a moth eaten album
full of photographs of my family members
with a layer of dust on its tattered cover.

When eagerly I went on turning pages one after another
my childhood paraded in front of me like a motion picture
and one black and white group photo caught my eyes
I could not but sigh with a wish to relive those days.

Around my parents thronged my brother and sisters
a pretty doll I was on the lap of my mother,
all in jolly mood with an air of laughter
but sweet those days are gone forever.

We all are now busy in chasing status and career
though under the same roof live like complete strangers
and the photograph of a golden age full of love
is lying on a heap of garbage like a wounded dove.