At times, looking at your granddaughter,
You wish she wouldn’t hurry so much
That she would hold that smile a little longer
And wouldn’t shake loose your enfolding arm.
You wish you hadn’t been so harsh with life
As to a bull to be taken by its horns.
Lingered a little longer at those turns on the road,
Prolonged that hasty goodbye by a word or two.
You wish you had aged more gracefully
And counted your losses with equanimity.
The childhood home lost to a multi-storied block,
The people who loomed over it dead, almost all.
Nodding off in your armchair by the window
In the pale glow of the afternoon sun
You people that home with all the familiar faces,
Fill it with all the laughter that was missed,
Erase the pettiness and the betrayals
And undo all that shouldn’t have been done.
In the looking glass of memories
Everything is alive and without shadows.
You haven’t walked away from that cry of the heart,
Haven’t told that lie which was never owned up.
The thoughtless boy who drowned the little kitten
To rid the house of cat-menace does not exist
You haven’t sent your old mother away
To a care home to die,
And the hands of the old grandfather clock
Haven’t moved even a second.
K. John Koshy is a former civil servant. He lives his superannuated life in Chennai with his wife and three cats and is an occasional writer, intermittent gardener and is constantly in love with life, in all its forms.
Featured image: Andrew Seaman/Unsplash