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The Unfinished Story and Another Poem

by Rakshita Banswal Tikoo
(Gurgaon, India)

Poem 1 - The Unfinished story
By Rakshita Banswal Tikoo

He wrote a story once,
Left it unfinished, couldn’t discern the ending
And decided to bury it behind the backyard hedgerow
Along which the grey-water creek ran.

7 years after, he stand at the same spot,
The creek had widened, stream wild and blustery,
And the soil where the story was buried
Had now transmuted into a strong bamboo bush
Into a reticent, forsaken memory.

He bends, looks intently at the soil where the bamboo stood
Eying every word, staring at each sound that seeps out
And start to loom, hover around him.
How crass of it to now appear, to spring up like this?

Does it want a closure?
Or an ending for a culmination?
Or asking if he even remembers it!
Stream hurried noisily, he felt a sudden quiver
In bamboo leaves and his sweaty palms.

Up in the grey blurry skies,
He raised his rickety arms as the rain fell,
Coalescing each word, each sound
And he ensnared each other one of them.
He now knew the ending.

***

Poem 2 – Our Morning Walk
By Rakshita Banswal Tikoo

That rusty Iron Park gate is open, a secondary entrance,
barely into a 12inch breach for walkers to entre.
We walk clockwise, every single time, without a miss
that’s what John likes, my compulsive but chirpy husband.
The oval shaped jogging trek thick with hovering trees,
park dogs attentive, even after their nightly escapades,
suddenly darts at some animal, I thought it was a squirrel.

One creepy fellow, a regular like us, walks past slyly,
hiding himself behind bizarre golden-frame sunglasses,
habitually turns his head back for a protracted stare,
John, almost always reciprocates with a nasty gape,
at times with a fist or a questioning head nudge,
he struts away soundlessly, avoiding ignominy .

A matron, who beheld himself park’s caretaker,
holler his morning greeting at us, with a flying hat,
babbling while flinging silage at pigeons in steady pauses.
He whines about his futile retired life when I ask about his health,
then start reading his phone literally touching his nose,
vision too blurred, perhaps from years of wisdom.

An elderly couple probably in their late 80s,
convene on their preferred red park bench,
usually joined by two others for prayer chants,
the lady as tall as a 4th grader, as usual extends a smile,
always has her hands braided into her husband’s for support,
displaying a revered history, just like this park from the 1940s.

**