Come back to your ‘self’...

After all your wanderings with

Memories that rummage through
old words for comfort,
that gaze at forgotten pictures
for traces of frail links

Hope that shops for trinkets
or leaps to hold the moon

Despair that shovels up
old hurts and failures,
that lives among sighing shadows
that thin away only to re-form

Dreams that droop and drop dead
or trickle away and dry up,
that perforate over time
or become brittle

After all your wanderings with
these

Come back to your ‘self’,
the still centre,
the only true refuge
from all restive driftings.

'Tread softly ...'

Yes, bare your teeth
But
before you bend down
to bite off my fancies,
know this –
smooth shape-shifters
they will spiral away
like smoke
rainbow-coloured.

Feel cheated,
Jolted
Do you?
'Tread softly for you tread on my dreams'
And
I will trip lightly on yours
More -
I will ransack my buried good wishes
to pour golden blessings on yours.

The door

The Door

One passage leads
to another
Each narrow –
with cramping thoughts
Finally,
a wide, wide passage
Its walls stabbed by time
make faces at me
as they whisper
the histories of those
who have walked here before.

The passage –
its niches naked,
its air heavy
with dreams gone stale

Self-doubt stalks me.
How will the passage end?
Will I make it to the end?
Then I discern a door
in the far distance
Its precise form and colour
unclear

Excitement quickens my steps
Then fear numbs them
The door, the door
Have to get there,
have to get there
I chant the mantra

I am there
with dreamlike swiftness

A door in solid wood
Painted a sprightly green
where sun-yellow spots
sport unchecked
What joy!

I sit near it,
afraid to touch it,
push it open
The door looks jammed
Is it?
My mood darkens
I spray the door
a gruesome grey
with fears and
negative thoughts
I sink and sink
into hopeless stupor

Then, an inner voice,
low yet clear
rouses me
I listen

I slam the door shut
within me
that leads to the arid space
of stifling self-doubt
And, with a firm hand
open the green door
to a world that knows
how to renew itself,
and guards this secret,
for those who seek it,
with zealous alacrity