Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Message for Papa Bois

Father, whose forest
I have left
Forsaken this place
But not the loft
Of its ideals

Fled I from my home
Not for hate as you think,
But love, who’s sweet voice
I still thank
For the song she sung me

Long time
As humans measure,
A hunter met
The forest master

Who decreed
For his crime, to pay
With his life
And the hunter knew despite his plead,
The forest he would never leave

The gentle woods
Needs a savage protector
But the savage woods
Needs a gentle heart
Am I wrong Father,
To play that part?

The forest had taught me strength
Its creatures taught me mercy
And the hunter in the shadow of death
Did teach my heart pity

So on the twilight,
Before his last day,
My power I used
To spirit us away

And from that time
We two,
In human world
Came to know
The echoes of love's song

Alas, did I come to know
That immortal heart
Could not fathom mortal doom
Too soon, too soon!
Cruel Reaper did
Force us two to part
Broken now Father,
Is your daughter's heart

But leave him still
I could not,
Though this human form
I did cast off

Changed now,
I am
My roots reach down
Into the earth where my beloved does sleep
And from my boughs rains tears of pink
To mark his grave when I weep

I stand forever by his side,
And hope the birds would tell
That not for hate but for love
Left you, your daughter
Immortelle.

(c)Geeta Boodansingh, 2011

Depression

The dishes
Have been
Unwashed
For days

The clock
Ticks
Time
Away
Seconds,
Minutes,
Hours,
Days

The phone
Rings
Unanswered
Questions
Friends,
Famly,
Work
Who
Cares?

The bed
Unmade
Sheets
Oppressive
Dark thing
That suffocates
Silent screams

Waiting
Under
Yellow-green haze
For something
And
Nothing
Inertia’s end
But what end?

(c)Geeta Boodansingh, 2011

Fare well to Papa Bois

I watch the silence of the leaves falling
Tears of a fading world
The sound the echo of the death bell tolling
Tolling his goodbye to the world

If I listen I could hear his voice calling
But gone now are the children of twilight who would hear
Gone are those who kept the old Gods from falling
When they were dragged , shackled, in humiliation and despair

He was once the keeper of the lost children
Who would keep them now?
These children who are lost but think they found themselves

The sky would burn black from the altars of a new God,
That would blind us to the sight of a falling leaf,
To holes in the sky,
To his passing ,
To his goodbye for a dying world.

(c)Geeta Boodansingh, 2011