FORTITUDE Desert spaces and the dull common days Play hide and seek with our inspirations Waiting patiently with the rod and line For a big catch falling for red-herring. Like sailing for months to see an island Or combing the forest to spot a deer Rummage around in the attic for toy How the joy borders upon luck and chance. Carrot and stick and chaos and fractals Random lots and Fibonacci numbers Lollipops and lullabies on the sly Might lead to snowball a butterfly effect. A thousand oysters wasted for a pearl Once in a blue-moon comes the Midas touch The old man and the sea is an old tale Keep on tilling the field crave not for crop. Oasis or rainbow is will-o-the –wisp Kaleidoscope of false leads beckon But the beacon of hope amidst the gloom Is one’s intensity of emotion. In emptiness of a jug has its use So also the barrenness of a vale Bartlebooth’s voyages are just not in vain Recall Captain Ahab’s chase of the whale. [Fri- 011004] FINITUDE For want of a word in speech you stammer And stumble while walking, without reason When sailing smoothly pops up some hurdle So goes the mystery of improbable. Whether it is a play of hide and seek Or just playing pranks upon the hapless The stray events emerge from some secret To teach a thing or two to unmindfuls. For an unseen force calls the shots But we are caught up in a transition To a state of things devoid of discords And therefore rise all these teething troubles. Prick of imperfection is a lesson To be aware that we are lacking in Gripped by a sense of insecurity We are forced to aspire incessantly. Like a bottled up djinn, in other words Restive to be uncorked and gain freedom We too, wary of our mean finitude Long liberty and lost autonomy. An old story it is told recurrently And yet the message is rarely brought home The prophet proposes, alas! the death disposes Perhaps the new dawn is still a long way. [Mon-111004]