Chocolate Times

I kept walking backwards I kept walking backwards Crossing many a fragrant spring Skipping the rains, twisters and storms And shivering through bone biting chills. I's there at college gate giving a rose to pretty Preethi Rao: the next moment wadling head bent touching the four red weals on cheek in ears as echoed her foul howlings. There I's running in half-knicker towards the school with books in hand ...and there I am, standing before my angry Mom, waving a cane. With muddy legs and ruddy face I's showing greenly paddy fields and newly laid gravel roadway with stretched out hand and raining eyes showing the dancing pods and leaves the new cartway and muddy pools. I close my eyes and breath a draft Of tender air perfumed with love and purity of life bygone. I hear the sounds of temple bells and chanting of the holy names and hymns from sacred Vedic texts. Oh reverie, a sweetest reverie, a chocolate that melted with the times Into every season of dead decades enlivening me today with fresh savors.