Flood Of Tears Poem by AtreyaSarma Uppaluri

Parched souls craned their necks for the life giving monsoon
That wasn’t to be soon and did turn a distant moon.
They craved for a pot of water to quench their thirst;
Like a bolt from the blue, waters rushed in a burst.
Ere the battered critters could at all swallow some,
The spate swallowed them up in a single lump sum.

Sweating it out and borrowing, the tiller somehow had raised a crop;
The flood nipped and swept away the fruit of his blood to the last drop;
His simple wishes for a few smiles in his family – alas!
Were rudely washed away in the fury of that deadly morass.

How to eke out their livelihood
Was no longer the question good;
Only somehow their lives to save
From a menacing wat’ry grave.
For water we would do anything desperate:
Cloud seasoning and rituals elaborate,
Prayers and sacrifices; ev’n deadly wars wage
Between brother and brother with a fiery rage.

When at last the rain kindly relents and pours in plenty,
Agape, we just look clueless and let away the bounty
Caring for no dams or reservoirs or a water grid
Having grabbed the catchments in a greed that is so acrid.

The water gradients are displaced by tenements myopic
We’ve failed to tap and save the water for a rainy day. How sick!
We swoon over the frozen molecule of water on the moon
Not bothering here about channelizing the watery boon.

Time and again Nature hands out many lessons bitter
If only we heed to learn them, our lives would turn better.

Nov 08,2009
Lincoln, Nebraska, USA