The Bridge

#wordpresspromt #worldpoetryday

Hello readers! Happy World Poetry Day!

I returned home or to what was left of it,

To The Sun shining bright,again,

It’s warmth, caressing, invoking me,

To breathe freely, again,

Something that I hadn’t done in long,

Something I’d forgotten, something I feared,

For I was terrified, the relief afterwards,

Would be pillaged and scarred, again.

Who knew orders and commands could change everything,

From buildings to minds, even the air feels different,

It doesn’t spill happiness and vibrance anymore,

There is just a humoungous silence now,

Emanating from the new concrete roofs,

The thoughts too are battling wars of their own,

Struggle and synthesis seem never ceasing,

The war has changed everything.

There is a memorial now in the centre of the town,

That celebrates the silent cries and painful clashes,

Its newness too has been shrouded by age,

Eight to be precise,

Farcical enough to be laughed at,

For it has spent half of the years in my town,

Of how many I have spent away from it,

Or rather hidden away from the eyes of the world.

My thoughts are jumbled and haphazard today,

For I’m living in the present and breathing in the past,

Yet I’m amazed at how some things have remained constant,

My sheer illusions,

Because in unknown lands my known memories were my allies,

And today those allies have become unknown in my known lands.

I walk in circles,

To trace the empathetic traces of familiarity,

Yet I find none,

Nothing at all,

It’s beautiful how each round, branches different memories,

Each time, I retrace my steps,

On the same, familiar, unfamiliar paths.

Suddenly I stop and dart my eyes across the fields,

Where a bustling school, still exists in my memories,

That taught us things, that make sense now,

Like how peaceful power and powerful peace,

Mean the same,

Yet all I remember is how the troops,

Distorted this and established a ‘Reign of Terror’,

For years to come.

There exists a bridge now, ironically,

Connecting the two nations that once had fought,

However nobody seems to cross the boundaries,

To make peace with their present,

As the foundations of this bridge,

Bricks of hope, dreams and laughter,

Are still being tormented by the past,

Their maudlin existence still awaiting a hopeful future.

With shaky feet and thoughts apprehensive,

I force myself to see ahead, to walk,

On the bridge,

From the past, on the present, to the future,

However I stop halfway,

As I see doves flying across the boundaries, happily,

I admire their courage, for they know,

Moving forward is necessary and this demands sacrifice of past.

©Bhagyashree 2022. All rights reserved.

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Until the next time,

Cheers!