Saturday, June 8, 2013

Looking at an Old Group Photo

(Photograph for illustration purpose only)


She takes out a group photo
Frozen by the flash of future
And smiles forced out by a command
They stand in a row like specimen dolls
From a vast land of imagination

A group photo is like a zoo
Of different species of animals
Yet to show the full potential of their genes;
Now they are feathered, puffed up and plump
Unseasoned by innocence

Innocence?, each one in the picture
Sends out a mocking smile
Animating themselves in a surreal turn
Can’t you see the exuding hopes
And the deepening pain in our eyes?

Decades long weathering would
Make some shine like gems
And some remain coal till
The miner called Time digs them up
From the innards of dark despair

An old group photograph is a chamber of
Uncertain possibilities; disparate desires,
A jumble of nicknames, poems and glances
Hark well, you could hear sighs and
The kisses that never left the lips

Time does not photoshop the features
Fame does not airbrush the roughness
Success does not add a pride on those cheeks
Till these animals come back one day
To defrost their wild memories, now matured and cold

Before her and my eyes, they leave one by one
From the frame of our conversations of past
And we remain, two people suddenly distanced by
The emptiness left by the young animals;
A huge wasteland of absent and forgotten people.




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