Nostalgia.

As we walk along the path

That is Life

Our roads may diverge

Yours may be bright and sunny

With meadows green and silent, peaceful

Mine may be full of colour, a forest, and falling rain

And even if sometimes your way seems

Filled with potholes and snakes and wetlands;

And mine, with red fire burning, and all the trees gone,

Remember.

Remember that once we walked together, endured together,

Through soot and snow,

With cold water in our shoes;

You shook it out, I couldn’t

Remember.

A road fraught with perils, danger lurking

Around every bend,

You fought them, I didn’t.

And we went our own

Separate ways.

Someday when you look back

You will laugh at your past

Worrying self, you will

Wake up to the sunrise at the edge of

The earth, and you will look out into the distance, and say,

“What a wonderful day, o me, o Life!”

Remember,

We never know the places we’ll go

Until we reach them.

We never cross the rapids in rivers

Until we fight them.

We never bother to see

How good life is with our tiny, tiny problems

Until we see another, without.

You will look out into the distance,

And you will see a sillhouette.

By then you will have forgotten, but your heart will tell you--

I know her from somewhere.

First slowly, and then all at once, you will

Remember

The first snowfall, six feet high, us, trudging along

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening,

Helping a squirrel

With her acorns before the icy winter,

Watching as the leaves on trees wither and die,

Wondering if we will, too;

Forgetting that spring and fall come after,

And all will be well

Once again, this time, forever.

I will be close enough, then, for you to

Look into my eyes

And see how much I missed you,

Walking beside you, laughing with you;

After years of searching for the perfect Life,

With cold gold in our pockets,

But none to share it with,

We find each other.

I will take your hand,

And lead you onward

To the beginning

Of a new adventure.


~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Slaves.

Slaves

We are all slaves, such slaves!
Slaves of the people we love,
And who act a certain way,
Not knowing they hurt us,
Because they don't care.
We are slaves, for we do not see any good
In trying to right their wrongs,
For we know their plates are full
With sin,
And if we make them aware
They will say something worse
Than what they already had,
And we are slaves, we are afraid
That we might bring upon them misfortune
And so we keep quiet
Not daring to utter a word
Held back by fear, helplessness,
And love.
Such slaves!

~Vruta Gupte.

The Ostrich Who Could Fly

Hello, everyone!  I'm writing a blog post after an unusually long time.
I wrote a poem; I hope y'all like it! 


The Ostrich Who Could Fly

Once as I was walking
Across a barren land,
I chanced upon an ostrich
With his head half in the sand.

I stopped awhile, listened closely,
The ostrich was now weeping
I asked him what was wrong;
He didn't answer; silence creeping.

He straightened his long neck,
And pointed to the sky
I craned my neck to see and I saw
Ostriches that could fly.

Tears were running down his cheeks,
I asked him,"Didn't you try?"
"I did," he said, his voice cracking,
"I s'pose I'm not meant to fly."

"Try a thousand times," I said,
"You'll fly eventually, you'll see,
Just because you couldn't fly then
Doesn't mean that's all you can be."

The ostrich nodded, wiped his tears,
I left him to his devices,
Life's too short to be bogged down
By these insignificant crises.

A few months later, I walked again
Across that barren land,
I'd forgotten all about
The ostrich in the sand.

But then I saw a shadow
On the ground ahead of me
And I remembered the ostrich
Who had wanted to be free.

I looked up, and there he was
Soaring gracefully through the air
I smiled to myself, and realized
Life really isn't unfair.

~Vruta Gupte.

P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here (only people who are viewing this on their computers will be able to see it, but if you're using a cellphone, you can still comment using the default Blogger comment box.)  

If you want to check out more of my writing, please click here. Thank you! 

The Plight of the Underling

An original poem in two pictures.  Pretty neat, eh?  (This is the original and only copy of the poem.  Please comment or notify me if the pictures aren't clear--thank you!)

P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here (only people who are viewing this on their computers will be able to see it, but if you're using a cellphone, you can still comment using the default Blogger comment box.)  Thank you! 

~ Vruta Gupte.

Poems By Robert Frost

There are few of us who haven't heard about the famous American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963).  I read a few of his poems on a site called PoetryFoundation and thought I should share some of them with you.  They're beautiful.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know. 

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Birches

BY ROBERT FROST

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969)