Dark Fringes

S O M A L I P A N D A

In those dewy days,
While my stubborn mouth refused to take a bite,
My English professor father used to put me on his knees
and to tell me the story of dense forests and silent nights,
depicting the fringed darkness, composed by the semi-liquid moonlight
streaming through the leaves of tall trees of Hyperion family,
with only the chirping of crickets- Shhh! Keu kotthao nei, jhi jhi poka dakche!
Ahh, yes, this Coleridgean silence was introduced by my father to his 3-year-old,
and her jaws dropped trying to fathom the fear quotient in the story;
trying to visualise forest, or big trees, or moonlight;
or the poet with wide pensive eyes and a broad face, that the father made the girl see.

In the meantime, the bowl was empty, the father went back to his work.

And I am stuck eternally, in that dark fringes, evaluating, understanding, calculating,
the ever-changing distances between darkness and light,
the ever-diminishing dimensions between love and hate,
the paradigm of loneliness and exposure,
the role reversal of sound and silence

This equation of dark fringe haunted me ever after
and I kept on balancing the bi-polarity of our existence
By making intricate sounds to lace the unfathomable silence like the black hole,
Or creating small silences in between beats or pulses to approach the Silence Ultima.