~ today is poetry day.

today is poetry day
the day when you notice
the warm shafts of sunlight
cutting through the gaps between
autumn's leaves
as they spiral slowly towards the grass
carried by the wind
and sometimes the dust
we so abhor
settles on them
and makes them sparkle

the weather in this town
almost never follows
the charts they talk verily about
and so when it rains
the golden-red-orange bits of trees
are plastered to the asphalt
sometimes bicycles flatten them out
and turn them brown
muddy water from the gutters
swirls around their last lost freshness
soon they will be gone
and the winter shall come
the whole lot of us will be left wondering
why every day couldn't be poetry day.

but this thought will be forgotten
the merciless cold will force
the strongest of us into our rather weak strongholds
all branches will be bare
photographs will celebrate
white roads peppered with black branches
rising from their roots like phoenixes
hot chocolate with marshmallows
and syrup will be sold on the sidewalks
until the blizzards and hurricanes
reduce all our homes
to broken sticks and broken bricks
and cement that doesn't cement anything anymore
ravaged to the ground

after a long while
of suffering and anguish
and much grief and angst
stepping carefully around the power lines
so you aren't shocked to your core
all the snowmen will melt
their carrot noses will rot into oblivion
(or into fertilizer)
the tar will crunch underneath your sneakers
every sunday the ice cream truck
shall jingle its bells from off your street
but by the time you reach
all the vanilla's finished
so you trot along the line the aligned doors make,
your red-and-white sweater bunched up
in a bouquet of sadness
and stay home
and never come back out again
until one day
a friend taps on your window
with a bag of crackers
and a pack of cheese slices
from the supermarket, saying,
"step lively, it's summer!"
so you do
and you forget you were ever unhappy
and the sadness melts away just like the snowman
out in the back of your yard.

~ vruta gupte.