Thoughts, stories and a journey

Diary entries by my father. Dated 2.6.2002

12

Some dressed in white

Each like a taper blossoming light

Most of them merry

Some of them grave

Each of them lithe

As willows that wave

Some bearing violets

Some bearing bay

One with a burning rose

Hidden away-

When I am all alone

Envy me then

For I have better friends

Than women and men

13

There are stories that unwind

Themselves simply

As a ball of string

Think how a spider makes a web

How the web is torn by people and brooms

Insects, rapacious birds

How the spider rebuilds and rebuilds

Until the wind takes the web

And breaks it and flicks it

Into heavens blue and innocent immensity

14

Below the penumbra of vision

A small butterfly tricked its way across

The brown field beside us

And I thought to myself where the hell did it come from

Last night was a hard frost

And then I knew it had been born

This day: perhaps a moment ago

And its life was flickering out

In our presence

As we walked with our hands in a lovers clasp

On the straight low path

Beside the canal

That made us think of home

In tumbling autumn days

15

The point of journey is not to arrive

But to return home

Laden with pollen you shall work up

Into honey the mind feeds on

Jaswant Singh Matharu

This blog is dedicated to the memory of my dear father Jaswant Singh Matharu.

In his twilight years he maintained diaries which are a glimpse into his sensitive soul.

I share the pages of one of his diaries here.