The Land I Once Knew

The land once familiar to me,

The roads I've walked,

The fields I've surveyed,

The trees I've climbed,

The hills I’ve hiked,

Were no longer familiar to me.

I failed to remember when

The land is coarse and dusty

The fields are barren and dry

The trees are old and creepy

Or that I am but a stranger!

Perhaps we've parted our way

One early morning, long ago

When I left the land,

In search of a dream,

Only to return a decade later, or so.

The land had been my dream,

In the day, and in the night,

And I promised myself

That I’ll return one day, soon

To live with the land.

But later in a sleepy slow

And the tricks of the sadist memories,

Little by little, the dreams began to change

And get buried away, deep

The land, with other memories!

A decade later that dream resurfaced

About a land that I once knew,

It tugged my heart,

And it tugged my soul,

Until one late hour in the setting sun,

When I finally kissed its feet.

But alas, the land has forgotten me!

I had walked these roads, pleaded I,

I had surveyed these fields, screamed I,

I had climbed these trees, begged I,

I had hiked these hills, cried I,

But an eerie silence was my answer!

So I walked the roads and surveyed the fields,

I climbed the trees and hiked up the hills,

But the missing feeling of belongingness,

Can only gulf the sense of being forgotten.

So I made this promise that one day

The land will never forget me again,

For I'll be one again with the land

Head to toe, bone and skeletons,

Never to part again, one and whole,

deep in the heart, in mother earth!