Time smoothes rainbow hardness
Of tree basalt, vermillion jasper,
Silvery granite and pale feldspar
With the help of humdrum

But patient jeweller of tides;
Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,
Heat-cracked, wind-carved,
Death shapes compact among the rocks;

It drifts light as a fractured bone
When the tide uncovers,
It blinks among the smashed shells,
Upset by gulls, bleached by salt and sun

The broken crockery of living things;
An eagle surveys from the upland,
Unsympathetic to the burdens
I have carried here;

The sea would not hug me, so I sit,
Hollow as driftwood, jumbled as pebbles

 

Sandeep Kumar Mishra is a writer, poet, and lecturer in English Literature. He is the art instructor at Kishlaya Outsider Art Academy. He has edited a collection of poems by various poets – Pearls (2002) and written a professional guidebook -How to be (2016) and a collection of poems and art-Feel My Heart(2016)