Chocolate Times Poem by Sathya Narayana

I kept walking backwards
I kept walking backwards
Crossing many a fragrant spring
Skipping the rains, twisters and storms
And shivering through bone biting chills.

I's there at college gate giving
a rose to pretty Preethi Rao:
the next moment wadling head bent
touching the four red weals on cheek
in ears as echoed her foul howlings.

There I's running in half-knicker
towards the school with books in hand
...and there I am, standing before
my angry Mom, waving a cane.

With muddy legs and ruddy face
I's showing greenly paddy fields
and newly laid gravel roadway
with stretched out hand and raining eyes
showing the dancing pods and leaves
the new cartway and muddy pools.

I close my eyes and breath a draft
Of tender air perfumed with love
and purity of life bygone.
I hear the sounds of temple bells
and chanting of the holy names
and hymns from sacred Vedic texts.
Oh reverie, a sweetest reverie,
a chocolate that melted with the times
Into every season of dead decades
enlivening me today with fresh savors.