Louis

Dibyasree Nandy

 

Oar in my small hands, I toil,

My burning desire to crawl, knees smeared with earthly soil;

The ship I am on, she weathers it, the vessel Noahtic;

Like the sea of birth’s herald, akin to the enlightenment of Nicodemus the Judaic.

She endures the world within her, my essence;

O Mother with your fountain of love, you breathe heavily to welcome my approaching presence;

In your palms, the waters swirl;

I am but a little fish; you, the older Pisces with a corona of pearl.

The boat gifted from the azure heavens blessed;

I wade past the bridge red upon the rill’s breast;

Opening my misty eyes, descending from the divine brook;

After sailing through twenty-seven decades of nights of no moon, I can finally look.

I heard you whisper;

My name is Louis with skin of pale jasper;

Embracing my role as a warrior gallant;

Me, a sunflower’s core, running after you, oh so radiant.

No lantern, no guide as I drift;

Afraid of phantoms and fangs of ensnaring creatures swift;

Turbulent, the roaring murky ocean, the craft rocks;

She is Aquarius the star, a flare upon the stream, a beam near the docks.

Mother All-Encompassing, she’s the Ark of Genesis;

Suffering my tiny universe; tolerance, her acceptance, yet nemesis;

An example I follow;

For she endeavours much, pain without question she does swallow.

This journey without direction, fearsome;

My heart throbs, anxious, loud as a drum;

Louis is coming, the ribbon of scarlet he clasps;

A flicker at the end of his voyage, he expunges dread, the connection of crimson he desperately grasps.