Windows to a Mountain

Friendship

your voice calling out my name
is the only beam of light guiding you 
uphill on the darkening mountain
while i search for your silhouette
in the labyrinthine streets below
quietly 


Entering the Mountain

It takes barely fifteen minutes,
lugging my blue morning shadow
up the concrete path which masons take,
past the piled up homestays,
past the bleating lambs and the shepherd
with his radio in the winter sun,
to get to the threshold of the stream’s greeting—
it greets whoever walks through the door.
And suddenly, I’ve lost what I no longer need.
To be washed clean of a name
and then go looking for it is fear.
It is neither in the dappled shade
nor in the blue between the pines, pierced
by the pincushion sun. Stop, pay attention
to the colours on the redstart’s flicking tail.
Alone on that boulder, its single high-pitched note
rising above the stream’s continuous static even when you’re gone,
scrambling up gravel and loose soil on the other side.
Only when you return in the evening,
the wide flanks of the mountain open
and you hear it beating inside your ribcage
like a bird, fierce and sleepless,
come to roost there.

~

Snehal Vadher was born and raised in Bombay. He has taught English and creative writing for over a decade. He now guides bicycle tours and treks in Dharamshala. This is his first collection of poems.