When I was young
life to me
was a mystery;
it was made
of the wind.
To me, it was
as complex
as the streaks
of light
on the forehead
of the night.

Confused and dazed,
I often used to
watch the sky
continuously,
on and on,
hoping to unleash
the threads of life
from the perpetuity
of the naked sky.

“What are you doing,
my son? Don’t you have
anything better to do? Stop
gazing at the sky all day long?”
My mother used to carp.

“I am searching,
the meaning of life, mother.
I am not looking at the sky.
I am trying to erase
the clouds,
line by line,
and see, if God
has left some clues
about the mystery of life
beneath the cloud’s veil for me,”
used to be my reply.

Ah! Now I am old,
and the curiosity
within me has died.
But they say,
it is as it was then.
hiding beneath
the masks of the dead
secretly watching
the stars summing up
the zeros in the emptiness.

Now, my friend!
After all these years,
I have come
to understand
that life is nothing.
Yes, it is nothing
but a composed series
of coincidences, and
how we react to these
– is everything.
Our reaction determines
who we are- we are the key.

How foolish I was
to seek the meaning of life
-on the corridors of the sky.

The sky is nothing.
I have seen the sky
crying in my dreams.
The sky is empty.
I have heard the sky
begging in my dreams.

Copyright 2007 Bhuwan Thapaliya