Where is the lamp?

Burning the midnight oil,
No lamp around.
A new fire inside. 

Listening

Sound, its essence. 

It's dance with Space. 

I wanted to see this. 

"Look at the space that sound creates"

-Our teacher's words to us. 

I meet with the mountains,

I hear the monkeys chattering.

The woodpecker is at his job - 

Tock! Tock! Tock! Tock! 

Other chirpy birds

Join the symphony. 

The axiom says - 

Sound is the ancestor.

Hearing is born thence. 

These words that I pen down then,

Are not mine. 

They were around,

For me to hear. 

Where do they come from? 

What's behind this mountain's music? 

Like a coy lover on her honeymoon,

The new moon appeared a sliver. 

Before disappearing into the western sky

He is the same moon

Who's been lighting up the nights

of moony romances 

Through centuries. 

And yet he is not the same. 

Is he not also weary, agonised? 

Listening to the sorrow of loneliness

Crying herself to sleep night after night. 

He is changing all the time. 

The sound of this moment,

Has altered this moment's space-

Irrevocably. 

This moment is never again. 

Neither is the space it occupied. 

What is Space then,

If not the passage of Time? 

As I sit with the mountain,

And hear its music_

Her stillness tugs at me.

His silence invites me. 

This is music, hidden. 

Beyond my reach. 

Yet I can feel it. 

The silence reaching out

As no spoken word can. 

The silence that manifests,

as the crik! crik! of the cricket

holds a thousand other insects,

scurrying about their jobs. 

The silence,

in the howl of a solitary dog

also carries another dog,

that she is calling out to. 

The silence of this dark mountain,

is the sound of fire crackling

And lava gushing out 

from a volcano in the Maldives. 

As I sit here

with my back on the grass,

looking up at the infinite inky blue

I write these words

that are not mine:

When all is quiet,

Where is yesterday?

Where is tomorrow? 

This moment holds all. 

The space of this moment. 

The sound of its silence. 

Full Circle

The sonorous beat of "Vishoka va jyotishmati"
Training breath with systematic sound.
Reciting a sutra with the teacher,
A glimpse of silence within.

Walking alone, I am not alone at all.
These majestic hills stand with me,
Trees and leaves and pebbles and ants -
All their sounds merge into a stillness,
That continues all the way to my heart.

The heart of silence.
Can I go into it? I am afraid.
Walking into the forest with friends
Plunging into the stillness I saw from afar,
Climbing, clinging, slipping, holding, walking
Into the depths of a silence
That burst forth into divine melody -
Our teacher sings for us.

We made sound,
That took me to silence.
From that silence,
Came the gift of sound, music.
Full circle.