Birthday Poem by Praveen Kumar In Shobha Priya

Once in an age
Comes birthday, reminds
How once years back
I built bridge to this world.

Once in an age
Comes birthday, reminds
How this world without my world
Once existed as well.

Birthdays flash in wheels,
The revolutions passed behind,
Each adding to my growth
To stand me where I stand.

I pass on from womb to grave
In the birth and death scale,
Farer each birthday; farther from
Where I seedled and moulded live.

It reminds me my past,
It reminds the time ahead,
It reminds above all, present,
The subtle missions of life.

Thousand souls that tended me,
Thousand graces that blessed me,
To state me as this here, now,
Unwind in reels this very day.

It marks my life's mark-time,
The heroic march on the still land;
Quick marches, in doubles, too are there,
All take me ahead, year by year.

Divine reminders, birthdays
Of whence we came, where we go,
Of how little reached in our goals
And how far need run to fulfill the self.