Senior Citizen
A teenager opens the garden gate
and steps inside.
Flowers bloom on the plants
he has planted with his own hands.
Butterflies settle on petals,
red dragonflies dart above the bamboo fence.
He runs after a butterfly,
then a dragonfly,
then reaches out to touch a flower,
trying to feel the life within it.
The garden is his world,
and he is friends with everything in it.
After so many wounds and losses,
so many victories and defeats,
the boy has grown old.
He is now a senior citizen.
Still, he opens the gate and enters the garden.
He waters the plants, watches the butterflies
and dragonflies in flight,
but no longer runs after them.
Instead, he speaks to them in private
of his soul’s secret geography,
his silent wars,
his loneliness.
A man who had wanted to live
in love with flowers and nature
now finds a different music
in his kinship with trees, flowers,
dragonflies and butterflies.
Just then, his wife calls from inside:
“Listen, it’s getting late. You need to go to the market.
I’ve run out of my blood pressure medicine.
Don’t forget to bring that too…”
Poetry by sinha murari
Written on 2026-10-12 at 04:37
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