Walking Stick Poem by Nikhil Parekh

He held me solidly in his egalitarian palms; sometimes making me almost strangulate for mouthfuls of inevitable breath,

He caressed me every now and then on the cold ground; let beads of his passionate sweat dribble down my persona with nonchalant ease,

He raised me in exuberance towards the glittering blanket of stars; incessantly narrating mystical tales of this Universe to the flurry of innocuous children,

He dug inconspicuous holes with my mouth trudging soft soil; embossing intriguing shapes in the mud to amuse the dormant compartments of his weary mind,

He danced with tears of euphoria pouring down his cheeks; waving me in placid sheets of air; as he nostalgically reminisced the days when he was a cheeky child,

He banged me boundless number of times in ghastly darkness; endeavoring his best to gain an upper hand over the diabolically satanic night,

He flamboyantly marched clutching me with authority to his wrinkled fingers; attending to the battalion of alien delegates with astronomically stoical ease and
inherent charm,

He polished me ardently with the most stupendous quality of wax; painted me in a festoon of vivaciously gaudy color to match his every dress,

He starved me to unprecedented limits; with the only meal that I saliently cherished being the compassionate bellow of warmth imparted by his magical hands,

He swung me violently in all directions when attacked; defending his divinely countenance with the formidable tenacity in my body,

He fidgeted indefatigably with my nose; cuddling and scratching me rampantly when confronted with disdainful bouts of perpetual boredom,

He kept me bereft of the tiniest of cloth; left me shivering with the austere winds slapping me ruthlessly at all quarters; as he silently snored in his afternoon nap,

He occasionally placed me over his colossal ocean of personal belongings; which had taken an entire lifetime for him to perseveringly amass,

He inverted my body every now and again; mischievously smiling with his lips outstretched; as I insatiably cried to once again come back up,
He sometimes inadvertently forgot to carry me; but soon realized my overwhelming importance; as fate made him stumble down on every unveiling step,

He carried me on his head time and again to replicate a circus clown; propel all in vicinity to thunderously laugh till they fell in dreary exhaustion,

He many a moment called me by the names he adored; kissing me gently on my nape as people around him had long gone,

He grasped me the first thing as he awoke at the crack of ethereal dawn; even before he advanced on his journey to the rustic lavatory,

My master was a complete hundred years of age; and for him I wasn't just a mere walking stick; but a thing he kept close to his dwindling chest all day and night; an object he considered the most cherished to his everlastingly youthful heart; a sword that would protect him from the uncouth world; just as he was
about to utter his last shout.