Life of the Mind: Mapping Memories, A Poem by Juveria

Mapping Memories

Juveria Tabassum 

Bear with me, my friend

I’ll tell you where I’ve been.

No hills, no seas, no rivers

No lakes, no lofty mountains.

No tickets or passports,

What’s a visa, why the currency?

I’ve travelled through time,

I have hiked through the ages,

The pages, my plane

The music, my ship

Words, my only fuel;

Charged up with Their

Imagination.

I’ve been across the Seven Seas,

Climbed mountains

The Chomolungma too, in Paths of Glory.

Been all over Europe, to England,

Where I heard the Solitary Reaper croon

My steely wanderlust that bore me there,

Took me also, across the Atlantic, into the States,

Where through revolutions, I found,

Roots of people, not just trees.

Buried deep; spread far, far and wide.

Wide enough, to slip into Africa,

Slide under the Nile

And sway into the Sahara.

The burning heat, the pouring sweat,

Oh look! Camels and an oasis!

These are not mirages, just memories,

Conjured up from the books that I’ve read.

The Rainbow Nation I saw,

From between the stumps of the 22 yards,

Durban and Jo’burg,

Cape of Good Hope.

The Gentleman’s Game it was, too,

That drove me Down Under

To the land of the koalas,

Bordered by the boisterous buzz of Sydney.

Then flew, trans-Tasman

Into sheep and natural geysers,

The Haka- ‘bout which, I’m none the wiser.

Soon calls the East,

The smell of the spicy Orient.

A land too diverse, to be

Encased in my imagination-

My own Homeland,

Now so new and grown,

Yet still retains the splendour

That Tagore did write about.

I’ve been through time, I tell you

Been to places I couldn’t forget.

Met people I don’t remember

Done things too many to recollect

I have no proof, no pictures,

No painted portraits;

No slick selfies.

Memories are all I have.

Sad, happy, scary,

Wild, wild, wild memories.

                                                                              -j.t.