The Institute of Reflection
The virtual Agora for Occidental Meditation – A Tool for Clearer Thinking, Emotional Balance and a Rounded Perspective
by <a href="https://instituteofreflection.com/author/hemal-jayasuriya/" target="_self">Hemal Jayasuriya</a>

by Hemal Jayasuriya

Poetry thrives in a shadowy, allusive world in which feelings that can be un-pinnable in precise language come into a reality all their own. It may seem to have little to do with the world of facts and experimentation that is science. If all that there is can be explained by what we see and/or what we can prove, what need is there for poetry?
POEM

Imagining In A New Light

Sat in a carriage

Speeding on rails

As the setting Sun spreads a rosy glow,

You see those trees, trees, many, many trees

From the moving window.

Trees, in one moment, You imagine

Them passing Me, or then again

She wonders, seeing things in a different Light :

No, I must be passing them, for that is

The Reality I know, though now

In this moment, I realise it can be

One or the Other ; that makes Namila

Ponder deeply about things, all alone.

The Train halts. Bombay was

But now, this Village is

My place. The future is here ;

She wonders : can I make it run.

Is it possible for me to be

In this space and grow and thrive,

Be happy. Shiraz, we are two liquids

Of different kinds, in agitation, rotating,

Flowing, mixing, trying to be One,

In an estuarine niche, a Third Space

Becoming one calm hybrid Being like a Coral.

An endless Sea, devoid of stirring, rolling,

Restless waves as is the case in the Mind Seas

As of individual Beings.

She merges herself with waters of all kinds

Imagining the Self in a new Light.

Shiraz, we have been left on a Sea-shore

Some distance away from turmoil, carried

By a rising ripple from the roaring Sea

On this Goan sands, two Living dots,

A Coupled Binary, amongst billions

Of mindless grains of sand, unknowing of Life.

You and this one, Namila, Me, we are wondering

As to why we were brought here, to this place,

Now, under the gaze of those flickering Fireflies

Up there, staring at us from so far, far away