To the Valley of Flowers

I walk in a sea

Of wildflower blaze

Outbursts of springtime gold:

Smiling on carpets of meadowy green,

As if,

Fireflies on the fold

 

I cannot walk,

Without crushing them

(Do they see in me a kaiju beast?)

An anomaly

In an endless pointillist painting –

Of flowers in a flaxen feast

 

It reminds me then

Of a mountaineer though

Frank Smythe’s olden tales

His walks following Himalayan rains

In hills

And the floral vales

 

The Valley of Flowers, he enthralled

Joshimath, Ghangharia,

Heaven’s steps

As monsoon clouds

Billowed and bloomed

In dreamy, vagrant, pensive shapes

 

If I feel this much glee,

In a lunch-break walk

That barely lasts an hour,

How must have Smythe

Felt on his treks

In endless meadows, vales afar?

 

Is insanity then

The solace lone,

How else do you see the world?

A lonely walker

In the hills

And petals of yellow, gold unfurled

 

But how can I fathom

The joy that he felt

The hills that he saw decades back?

Time may fail,

Space cannot

I will need to follow that pilgrim track

 

I tell myself

It’s a long, long walk

That I start at the meadow, here, today

It must reach Govindghat, Ghangharia

Hemkund Lake

In a long and sinuous, weary way

 

Can I be Smythe

Somewhere, someday?

Can I traipse in his sylvan stars?

Is that me I see

In the tapestry of time,

There in the valley of flowers…

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Inspired by wildflowers and cape marigolds blooming at the onset of Spring at the Farm, Sydney

 19^th September, 2025

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