A long day’s work in world is ending – I am only a mile away from home now,
My foot on the accelerator has tightened and my eyes have become sharper,
I smell roses and freshly-cut lawns,
My neighborhood looks like a framed picture in my memory,
And the words of an old song stream up in my mind,
There is bounce in my walk and nervousness coils my voice
As I hug my daughter Kalki breathlessly while she opens the door of our home,
Our dachshund Robert abandons his elegant coolness and greets me with earnestness,
I intersect my wife’s excited gaze as she leans from her favorite recliner in my direction,
After a brisk banter with the family I break into a Beaujolais spinning yarns spun out of the day,
Kashmiri meal’s baroque spiciness commits a brazen yet ravishing raid on senses,
Without squandering my home’s welcome a bit I climb up to its second story,
Slipping into my study where books and pictures drape the walls,
Many half-opened books are strewn on the floor lying alongside with closed ones,
There is a picture of my mother and I perched on a stereo speaker,
She a 20-year old delicate coy beauty possessively holding her prize of a buxom two-year cuddly serene baby,
My grandfather’s small picture sneaks out from the bookshelves,
His turbaned, mustached face sitting abruptly over a rotund frame,
He is the one who told me once that I was the apple of his eyes,
We used to stroll together on our jaunts to Simla bazaars,
My attention is suddenly arrested by my desk and chair where I spend long hours,
Sweating out ideas and refining language to clothe them in,
That is the last project of my life and my soul has been set on fire by it,
Written word inspires the same power in me as prayers to a religious person,
On the top of my desk lies a sheaf of blank paper waiting for me,
To fill it with books, articles, essays, and poems,
Buoyed by this thought I look out of the window above my desk,
And see a sublime serenity serenade the setting sun,
A scene of such compelling grace and solemnity,
That I feel I have touched the whiff of a moment of eternity.

Suffern, New York, 6.4.2011 www.kaulscorner.com