Peacock on the Parapet

5 am in a summer’s morn -

What grace to start the day

For, on brooding hostel walls afar

A silhouette struts away

 

A peacock cries to break the day

Groggy, I wake anew

(I recall telling myself that dawn

Such starts be always few)

 

And for the first in Lucknow’s months,

I paid heed to these birds,

Not their colours, nor hundred eyes -

A shadow, thousand words

 

Skanda’s mount, what elegance

A tail that drapes the world

Eyes all rapt on a flight of rare

When the feathers all unfurled

 

I then realised, the school precinct

Was a canvas, artsy book

Desolate, dusty, yet with hues

If you knew which way to look

 

Here mortals shared the way with birds

That glowed with fire and sky,

And sang to quell the parched earth

Bereft in summer’s dry

 

When I look back, I wonder now

What more we miss each day?

The green and turquoise merged, ignored

With the black and white and grey

 

I also wonder if dreamers still

Peruse all night, and stay up late

To start the day with grace, finesse

That walks on a parapet…

 

2^nd August, 2025

 

Written in fond memory of days at Lucknow

Cover Image: Taken in 2010 by fellow crackpot, Mr. Mishra - perhaps one of the most prolific shutterbugs in the school