Still

A landscape of feathers

The smoothest natural canvas,

For Nature's painter-

Alighting while parading its beauty

Before retreating 

Into a well-worn easel.

Soot-black, rust-grey, brown like tinsel,

Folding up and pulling down the covers

Over grace, beauty and space,

Compounded with distance,

Rendering known unknowns, beautiful art.

Now mingled with unknown knowns,

Streaks of color paint the marauded canvas

Differently. Camouflage seems eminent,

Unimportance, inadvertent. The marvels

Of the aerial world, beget stupor as 

They transform into the pedestrian

In the realm which is terrestrial.

The miracle of flight now a bane,

As for food they must forage 

With feet, not fly with feathers.

I don't want to startle them.

It is silence that beckons them to the ground.

Startlement stirs them upwards, into the skies,

Simpering, whimpering, not soaring and diving-

Trespassers on a land where they are weak,

Vulnerable- they know they can't win.

Aviation is a weapon futile against 

The most unsparing adversary-humans.

At most, their flight irks, invades,

Interrupts. It invokes ire. But no more.

Yet it is also survival that makes them Earth-bound.

I make no effort to be surreptitious,

As it would defeat the purpose,

Of my morning stroll- yet the alighting myna,

Either unaware, or nonchalant, prowls about,

Pecking with her yellow webs at the satin grass

In a lawn abundant with weeds, ants and worms

That I fail to sight. I am amazed at her courage.

As I pace a few odd steps by her side,

She paces a few odd steps away, not out of fear,

But out of disinterest. Today my stillness,

Or lack thereof- is inconsequential. 

Previous saunters have caught many a winged warrior

Unawares- jerking them out of reveries as they

Timorously launch themselves towards safer havens-

Not today. Quite a day.

As I stop, admiring the myna, I gaze towards her 

Aviary abodes- tall trees, flowers sparsely dangling,

Blue skies, clouds gently drifting, right across.

Blissfully soaring, as I fix my gaze, past it-

Metamorphizing into shapes galore- playing

Hide-and-seek, behind pines and the broader

Of the tall trees, peering from behind 

The ashoka, the frangipani- smiling right at me.

I didn't know clouds moved!

Until I stood still today, and watched this wonderful sight

That fills the heart with joy

That open spaces can buy.

As I walk ahead, I realize, slowly, why.

Relative motion. I'm a brisker walker

Than are colluding drops of water

So they appear motionless. 

Brocaded by snow-tinged blue,

I feel oddly like a character in a musical globe,

Enclosed in spherical glass.

Yet when I look upwards, the question

Written plainly on my face- an answer 

Is returned from the infinite-

'The universe is yours to understand,

Before you can conquer it.'

And I truly feel like I can break 

The metaphorical ceiling of the sky,

And reach out, far and wide, 

And conquer the world-

Merely by standing still.