On the Road

In this time capsule of the road

I live within a steel cocoon,

The miles speed by, the garish signs

Promising the empty boon

To sate the ravenous appetite,

Fill mind with desultory dreams.

The miles speed by and all my soul

Seems rapt in other worlds, the streams

Of music melding with the tires.

My thoughts roam far beyond these wheels

And sounds impinge upon my ears

From a place beyond this life's ordeals,

The quiet of an Ashram's peace.

The faces of its devotees

Return as deep remembrances

Of soul arise from unplumbed seas

And I am carried back through years

Of longing held within the heart

For One in all this changing scene,

The constant in this crowded mart

Of time, this panoply of life,

Whom I no longer see but know

Above the turbulence of days,

The Friend to whose abode I go.

First published in Mother India - July 2005