From under the warm, clumpy quilt,
I’m awoken before dawn’s first blush,
By birds’ twittering; thunder growling;
The wind wailing through the pine trees;
And flashes of lightning over the hill top.
But, under it all, the stillness and serenity
Of an unscheduled power cut.
Yesterday’s plane was a time machine
That bore me back to Assam in the plains.
Jostled, encroached, and confounded;
And by taxi drivers, cajoled and haggled.
Then sped up the hills by a honking maniac,
As if he were ferrying a heart for transplant.
Not much off the mark, actually.
Sans Internet, I reach for the shelf;
An issue of ‘Poetry’, two decades old –
A gift from Charlottesville friends.
And while the rest of the house sleeps,
I pull the blinds aside and stand all tingly
By the window in the unheated room,
And read in the dawn’s early light.
Sheer bliss.
Abie Alexander © 2017
April 29, 2017
*Shillong, the capital of the state of Meghalaya in the North-East of India, is situated at a height of 4,500 feet (1,500 meters) above sea-level. The nearest airport is at Guwahati in the plains of neighboring Assam, the tea growing state.