Lifetime

In another lifetime,
I begged on streets for love,
Slaving to time
in a random dance,
never to come close
to that which I chose.
Passing sympathetic strangers
haunted my hours, with eyes mistaken
for a lover's haunting gaze.
And I trapped all their words
into colourful jars, labelled,
pressed memories between pages, and
friends that could have been
were renamed in a desperate clutch at fate!


And everything died - words faded,
reflections turned to dust,
mirrors shattered in ominous tones,
and strangers stood in familiar places.
My hands felt untrodden skins,
unwelcoming abodes shuttered from me,
barbed wires bit into my flesh,
writing 'unloved' to put me in place.


And suddenly,
as if in a slipping of skin to the winter's chill,
this lifetime arrived -
calm in its gaze and loving in its arms,
a body tolling a million bells of warmth.
Love had walked in unannounced,
guised as him with the sparkling eyes
and a smile that makes the world my throne.


And in a single moment,
an eternity of sorrow vanished,
lifetimes of repeated deaths were undone,
and as the brook gurgled nearby
so did I begin to live.