In Ignorant Bliss

Hometown was so named after the Great River for there could have been no other name. Where else can a breed get its name than from the breast that suckles it? From its eight springs it sprouts the milk that honeys the broth, the broth of life that has one and all savoring the seasons while seasoning same with untold goodies.

Hometown. Do I sing you a song or sing of you a one. You that evoke feelings a guy could scarcely hold, nay grab or grasp. First you evoke the feeling of heights and when one is hardly recovered from the dizzying effects, depths; with valleys so deep that its bottom is fathomless.

The mind’s ear is forever suffused with sounds filtered from above. The eyes, in turn, long to behold those captivating sights you afford aplenty. Even when one is farthest away from your horizons, one cannot but recline and dream of your essences. In the long run the grope is for that quintessential you that would murder this enveloping ennui with one stroke of charm at the nerve center of my lovelorn heart.

Not even night that hides all ills comes with the promised relief it adumbrates For, if the truth must be told, it is then that you are missed the more. Closed eyes open to capture the unique presences only a night under your pellucid skies can afford but to no avail. Not when no moon or stars are to be seen here where they have been banished to hell. The former’s soft and filtered incandescence that evokes the use of limbs in the lame, or the latter’s twinkle that evokes flying diamonds in nursery rhymes forever turning into nothing else but a forlorn dream.

And the absent sounds of your night, where the hell have they gone? The shriek of nameless insects lost in their network of chants. Whether each is inviting a lover to a tryst or calling a child to bed, none can tell. Only it makes one sure that one is where one ought to be – in the revered presence of our gods who only know what’s best for each and every one of us - as varied as our intonations are not withstanding. Does it imply that there are no insects in paradise if here like I have come to be told lays claim to being one.

Come out to play from wherever you hide, blind cricket of the compound eyes. I want to hear your high-pitched screech of yore all over again. Bring with you the grasshopper and the mantis, more so the latter if they are not at pray. Do not leave the firefly and glow worm behind; they both have jobs to do and the time is nigh. I won’t even mind the birds of the night, the witch owl if it can match the dare in me. Hoot your evil cry till kingdom come, I will not shirk. Yes, anything to add color to this dour night of nights.

Dearest Hometown, can you imagine that it never rains here? The absent rains are the liveliest mnemonics to my longing for you. For then I’d have raised my nostrils sky bound after the evaporating smell of your earth, stirred as the heavens shed their arrow of tears on her. Unrestrained I would run into the rain naked as at birth, hardly restrained from singing you songs as you wash me clean of transgression and shower me with blessings.

Like some day in the midst of days long gone by, when your rain and sun were locked in mortal combat gifted from above. All the children were riding the crest of waves for the spell that soon dispelled as the sun gained the upper hand and drove them indoors with intensified rays.

My o mine, even innocent rays unspoiled by haze are also alien here. Rays that hit the body unperturbed by greenhouse gases, best savored at its nascence as well as at its descent. Enjoyed with the entire animal kingdom of the land and air, all splayed out in away from their cocoons, as if in answer to a divine command written on hearts rather tablets.