Short Stories
The Only Reason
Vantage Rock lived up to its name all right! Gaunt rock, pervasive in panorama. Stark and sheer rock. Peaked crags that grabbed the first rays of the sun and wrapped them round their flinty heads.
There are just twenty of them, would you believe!
The rest are restrained, why not allowed to leave?
Maybe the score bears numberless grains of rice
To fill million stomachs, a little left over for mice.
Divine intervention? So meagre is thy daily bread
To seek pardon for trespass on so many left dead.
And who is to say when it reaches those who fell,
Provender’s arrived, not garnished with shrapnel?
Phials, tubes, needles snap in jolts, hop and lurch
As wheels skid, seeking grip in a desperate search
Cracked jars of water gush, fallen to a pitted road
Tyres screech in smoking craters, can’t bear load.
When mouths wail, ‘Water!’ Stomachs concave,
Vacant of even morsels, and minds solely crave
For life, so ruthless wrung till pink grist remains.
Scream! Call out those who’re erasing the stains!
Vantage Rock lived up to its name all right! Gaunt rock, pervasive in panorama. Stark and sheer rock. Peaked crags that grabbed the first rays of the sun and wrapped them round their flinty heads.
Somebody recently said that Felix is my pet
That’s because she hadn’t met the beagle yet.
Or else, she surely would have clearly seen
How badly mistaken she had actually been.
A little study of the domestic order of the peck.
Would’ve revealed the collar around my neck.
One day a sparrow came, alighted on my balcony railing
I, behind stirring curtains, saw her settle down, was glad
That of all the houses standing together, she chose mine.
To rest awhile, and with darting eyes take a second wind.
She saw me, and I knew she would take wing if I blinked
Yet I could not help, but she stayed perhaps a little tired
The virus will, sooner or later, play itself out
We repeat that, in spite of that nagging doubt.
In the meantime, it will take some of us along
Whether or not we have done anything wrong.
The game of life has ever played out like that
Sickness will always pick some out of the hat.
This present strain is blind, and is hungry too.
Social gap, washing hands, all that we can do.
The interior of a clinic- cum- residence. In the front is a living room to the left, and two bedrooms side by side. All rooms have open faces towards the audience. The first bedroom has a door to the living room.
When the flags of freedom fly
They surely must evoke
Visions of that valiant tribe
Who fought to break the yoke.
When the songs of freedom sound
They surely call to mind
Thorns they took away with them
The flowers they left behind.
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