"The Summer Lightning"

Here goes a poem I wrote ages back on ahem...Summer. I have never made any claims to any degree of timings in my posts. After all my blog is either about the past and/or about the future and nothing about the present.

Splotch!! Splotch!!!!
The ink spread across,
As sweat spattered on to the paper.

I had given up by then,
Writing is no fun,
when sweat flows more profusely than ideas.

“Damn the summer”, I cursed,
Breaking the pen into half.
For all the serious effort to write on my part,
the blighted summer still had the last laugh.

As I sat fretting and fuming aloud,
Someone called out my name.
Startled at the sound, I turned around to see,
A little kid standing upright.
Written all over the face, the unabashed glee,
Was the naked dual of me, all chirpy and bright.

"Shucks, you are in bad shape sonny
My God, you can’t be that old surely?
In case you do not recognise me,
You are the future of yours truly.”
Bantered, this part of me, from the past.

Wounded by the mocking words, I retorted
"It is this wretched summer so sweltering
The whole place is hot and scorching,
Humidity factor too, you must add,
to know why I look so haggard.
In the morning I started to write,
And throughout I had to fight.
I am sweating at every pore,
And my mind has long gone sore.
Blame it on this blighted summer,
God I ache for the cold winter”.

My past gave me a weird look
plus a smile befitting a crook.
And in a tone very patronizing, spoke,

“You are a loser my man, just as all men.
The summer is as hot as always
But you have changed.
Remember the time when you loved summer?
When summer meant holidays and cricket,
When the heat did not bother you,
You played all day long in the sun.
What did the heat do to you then?
Do you remember the time,
When you used to play barefoot in the ground?
Was the summer hot then?”


"You have grown stronger in the body with age.
But you have lost the plot on the way.
Summer is the ultimate test of adaptability.
It is the test of your ability to coexist.
The test is won when we unite with nature,
And not when we hide from it.
Flow like air and not block like a wall.
Is not just a lesson in martial arts for you.
It is the first law of survival too.
Surprising it is, that man,
Manages to forget this basic rule,
He knew untutored, as a child”.

“Look at that mighty creature Hanuman.
A monkey, yet still so human.
Remember his attempt to grab the sun,
Was it all a child’s attempt at fun?
No my friend.
Wishing to pay his salutations to the Lord of light,
That mighty kid made a giant leap and flew.
But struck down he was in mid flight,
By the adults, who had lost the plot just like you.”

“Next time, you complain about the sizzling heat,
Remember the time you were a kid.
United you were then with the nature
And heat was never a summer feature”


PS: Though the tone of the poem suggests otherwise, I do not belong to that "cocksure" group which does not accept that the earth is warming up.