Ruby Kaila Malhotra

Title: "In the Shadows of Becoming"

Amb. Ruby Meraki Oenomel/Ruby Kaila Malhotra

Country: Canada

.

Beneath the vaulted sky, of unspoken laws, bursar, pundit one?

The sacred silence night speaks, volcanoes, whip fragile grace

An echo faint, too distant to embrace? Lines meet? Concentric

Gauge opposing, other float listeners, treble at, the sound

.

Symbols of human need, a mirror, dimmed, with dust, crafts sets

From clay runs windows, reflecting hollow faces of doubt?

The stars, pistons they burn, cast their fire as truth, and we palate

And weave O heaven's sake Well into our own axiom myth

.

The constellations tell of distant lands, rounds extrapolate

Yet clouds have walked those realms of starlit stone, coffee or tea?

Are they real, or shadows cast by dreams? Or fire steams?

The cities rise and fall, as if, time would, bid, signals boosting?

.

But does ground, in her supernal wisdom, care or stream?

Each river walking winds, and pages, what of its course?

Does it bend to lands untouched, or seek the ocean's distant edge?

Shores tied to osmotic waves receding the dance with every step?

.

The soul, a multi-versed flame toggles poser in measured height

Heads dance upon the winds of tongues, intellect sweeps time

Fleeting no home within the mind absence jump starts minds new

Echo’s grasp, telescopes hide, salt sugar don't dissolve

.

Words phrase shadows fire cast upon stone, data outnumbered

Trace of light, might and right itself, tight adrift and gone?

And so, the roads we travel blur and twist, stakeholders hold

As geography becomes a shifting art, seekers in gated rooms tug

.

Where borders fall and rise like ocean waves., boundaries chisel

What is a place but just a point in space, x-ray trolleys in dungarees

A stillness wrapped in motion, seeking form, khaki rules navy when

While all the while, white, and brown it moves away from us?

.

Philosophy, that ancient, ceaseless quest, knots and crosses roll

Holds truth in riddles only half-unfolded, one in many bowl

What is the nature of a thing that is, disrobe, war and toss beats

If "is" itself may never truly "be", masked anthem common?

.

For certainty a mirage on the plain's ships sinks, waves so anchor

Dissolves as soon as one, attempts to drink, nuts and ions

Leaving, entrees tap, the thirst unquenched, yet ever deep.

Nehru dreams of cohesion, what are we but travelers

Upon a path so diverse integration that stretches into night?

.

Not lost, nor found all roads lead just momentary sparks

Of consciousness, like fireflies caught in dusk, dust

Flickering toward a truth we cannot name inclusivity crown

Of shells, scribbles, swans and seals, swirls swoop

Yet chasing, always chasing, insist nonetheless!