By Spurti Aluru
The putrid stench of the decaying seaweed streams around me
penetrating the air with an acrid tang of salt and something eccentrically saccharine.
Etched with a harmonious note of something earthy and aquatic,
it wraps
around
me,
Interweaved with the pungency of a barbecue sizzling behind the trees; ardent flames crackle violently at the base of the grill.
It shifts.
The floral scent in the atmosphere, from no evident source,
is almost palpable in my dewy hands.
It emanates from every pinch of the air around with a piquant edge to it.
The soles of my feet are reassuringly pricked by the coarse beads of
nature’s gold,
They really are gold: jewels with the power to inspire hope, build homes
Dreams carrying the memories of a sandcastle, a prism
refracting the lights of my life, as they pirouette around me
dancing to the songs of our soul,
our bundles of joy.
Buried within the echo of the earth’s heartbeat.
Thud-thud.
Thud-thud.
Thud-Thud.
Its timbre, textured with the air of the sea,
whirls around me.
My gaze flickers around until it settles on a four-leaf clover called Peace.
But the canyon of truth shrieks in protest;
so I delicately unravel the wispy fibres of its core,
the four leaves:
faith, hope, love, luck
and reconstruct them: bestowing them upon the true
4 pillars of my life,
the backbone that lifts me up; every day.
There’s a dense silence, otherwise, that envelopes me, drowning
me in the tranquillity of the night.
The crunch of the leaves, the clinking of crabs shushed rhythmically by the fall of the waves.
Instead of the fierce ochre pigment of the
sun radiating its blaze across the sky;
I was blessed, tonight, with the celestial Moon.
The Moon, taking a giant paintbrush to stroke its expansive home with a canopy of stars.
Their ethereal glow illuminating the sea with dancing lights that glide over the velvety waves.
Their shimmer refracting
through the roaring waves, as they turbulently rush towards me. It’s spectral.
I find it surreal: how swiftly they reduce to a soft layer of timid water
just next to my feet when two
seconds ago they were pouncing as if to swallow me.
The waters blanket the
sand, but leave it colder than before.
As the pacified waters crawl over the shore they hold my gaze with their striking depth.
They say water is
blue.
I can’t help but disagree.
There’s a spectrum of shades:
phthalo,
azure,
silver.
But it’s nature’s children:
the children of the sea,
the children of the soil,
the children of the sky
My children,
who steal my heart and tuck it away,
embracing it in the warmth of silken bliss.
As the sea opens its estuary to take a gulp of water from the
incoming gush of the erratic waves,
the winds grow restless.
And the clouds, too, want to join in.
Beginning as an almost inaudible whisper in the sky, the pitter
patter of the slushy drizzle sluices
down, quickly erupting into an incessant cataract
punching the innocent sand.
These skilful arrows shot from heaven’s quiver
Pierce the delicate sand on shore and
slither down the cascading vines around the tree trunk.
A spineless serpent.
The waves exhale a sigh of
relief,
and the birds inhale their breeze.
The flaps of the overarching fronds unfurl,
the sand effuses the transforming scent of parched to flourished earth.
The soil is a blackhole, ravenously sucking all of the water it finds.
The sea, blessed with its life of ambrosia.
The Earth, in eternal Peace.
By Spurti Aluru
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