Poem -02 ( April 2025)
Echoes of Childhood……
By Sanjay Pandita
The scent of rain on sunbaked earth
rising like an old song from courtyard cracks
Bare feet, dust-cloaked, racing the wind
laughter spilling, unbridled, like a river breaking free
Mother’s voice—soft as snowfall—
pulling me from twilight’s hush
A brass plate of saffron-steeped milk
its golden warmth pooling in my palms
leaving the taste of home on my tongue
The kerosene lamp flickers, restless
casting long shadows that waltz across the walls
walls that once held my smallest dreams
Fingers pressed to frost-laced glass
watching winter etch its delicate ghosts
Father’s woolen pheran, thick with cedar and cold
a fortress against the wind that howled through the valley
His stories, whispered into the night
rooting deep like a half-remembered prayer
The river, silenced beneath winter’s grip
its voice entombed in ice
only to rise again, thunderous
when spring kissed it back to life
Paper boats, frail as time itself
drifting toward a future I had yet to name
Now, when I turn back
memories do not dissolve into echoes—
they flare, like embers caught in a gust
burning quietly beneath the weight of years.
~ Sanjay Pandita is a poet , Columist and a writer, and has been widely published in country’s night profile publication .
