Sunil Sharma- A Poem

Secrets and dreams

On lazy summer afternoons

When the big household snored

Inside the closed rooms

 A little girl would slip out

Unnoticed and through a long

Passage across the open courtyard

And unused back garden enter

Alice-like to meet her secret friends.

Perched high on the Margo tree

Looking out at the dusty and twisting lanes

Of a north Indian semi-urban village

Off the NH---15,

The pre-teen, motherless, would open

A magical realm by gently parting

The screen of twigs and leaves and talk to

Her assorted friends, tiny, supple and winged.

The faeries and elves would all mix

In that dream-region and be her daily

Friends, unmindful of the hot winds.

Any intruder in the garden and the scene

Would fold back in a second and the girl

Hiding behind the boughs green would

Hardly breathe to foil any intended detection

By the female elders or old servants.

Once the threat was gone from that overgrown lot,

She resumed her journey into a mysterious land

Only kids can so wonderfully perform

Despite the bleakness around

And of such strange and secret travels

Adults have no time or inkling.

Author-bio:

Mumbai-based, Sunil Sharma is a widely-published Indian critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. He has already published three collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction, one novel and co-edited five books so far. His six short stories and the novel Minotaur were recently prescribed for the undergraduate classes under the Post-colonial Studies, Clayton University, Georgia, USA. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012. Recently his poems were published in theUN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree-2015.