Appreciation Poem by Ratnakar Rout

I was eagerly charged
Alone sitting cross legged
In a lonely corner of the park
The crowd swelled up
For an easy breath in relax
Anemic moon was looking like a legendary bow
Crumbling measurably in the midst of twinkling stars
Smart trees standing in heroic gesture
Were nodding their heads like the despotic kings.
The soft and tender touch of the northward breeze
Sank me in ecstasy.

I was unnoticeably lost in the atmosphere
And mingled in the crowd
Forgot to recall I had come alone
And would go back after a while
With my Himalayan ego
Burgeoning wishes, tainted beliefs,
Ineffable sorrows and helplessness.

Unemployed youths, desperate lovers
Dejected house owners, fatigued wage earners,
Playful kids, garrulous women and solitary girls
Along the twilight beauty all trapped my sight.
When one was cursing another man
Two birds fled away to seclusion
I came across the unending stream of vehicles
Looking like chain of light
Were running relentlessly
As if a galaxy of glittering stars in the sky
Were playing hide and seek with the
Nomadic clouds white and black
Of different shapes and sizes.

I felt me as a running vehicle
Which moves aimlessly in the messy crowd.
My goal is not set yet
What is my goal?
I also know not
I am like a restless cloud
A desperate destitute
An uprooted aborigine
I run, I move, I roam, I wonder
Why? I do not know.

At once I realized my entire dominion is lost
I am also lost in the oblivion
And I have no existence at all
I am not that I
And have reduced to a tiny dust particle in the mean time
And become as insignificant as the sand of the shore
I am a little herb, lost in the woods
And a dropp of water, lost in the ocean
I am reduced to a minuscule, constituent of a molecule
Either an atom or a proton or electron grossly invisible
And I am completely reduced to nothingness.

I discovered amazingly
All the mansions around were falling down
Collapsing like house of cards
Everything around disappeared
There was incredible stoic silence
And a reign of solitude prevailed everywhere
And I plunged in to absolute loneliness.

Suddenly I realized
I have become a part of that solitude
Am engrossed in deep penance
I discovered strangely
Some body’s head is crushed
Under the wheels of running vehicle
A furious sound I heard
As if a bombshell exploded
I was taken aback and searched
The fact here and there
And what did happen?
It was nobody’s head
I looked up and on, back and forth
And saw my shadow spread in the twilight
It was the shadow of my head
That appeared crushed
But in fact no head was found crushed
With this realization late in the evening
I returned back to my courtyard.