By Sekhar Banerjee
Lataguri East Cabin, south of Nepal Did I ever tell her– Moon always looks good where rail tracks intersect and depart near the woods? She never found a moon over the rail tracks south of Nepal; for that you need to have a railway cabin near the woods – a crossing, and rail tracks that are resolute yet unmindful Because all rail tracks are cartographers on vacation, like us Rail tracks have established their claim, as if, to be set up near the woods and settlements They know the shortest route to stations, home, the woods and the location of an honest full moon I should have also told her how it feels to be a forlorn railway track near home where only two trains pass to measure each other every autumn when the leaves of shimul trees float mid-air, and descend slowly on railroads to feel the warmth of ballast and metal It is simple and cryptic, when tracks meet and change path like baffled lovers; they depart – changing towns, stations and homes but locked permanently in intersections near a full moon somewhere over Lataguri East Cabin, south of Nepal The Middle Path You look at your own room – it is your last hypothesis on earth The middle path Your inertia of taking a side, left or right, is the wisdom of a carpenter who knows how the saw goes straight like a judgment and it saves half of the continents, skin of an orange, dolls from China, notebook from Bhutan, while giving you options to take a U-turn, to give up or to start and proceed straight like a termite in a labyrinth inside a piece of driftwood where there is no side like a Murakami book on your table which, in the third chapter, deals with cherry blossoms and music Your room is now almost Buddhist
Sekhar Banerjee is an author. He has four poetry collections and a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. His works have been published in Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, Kitaab, Borderless Journal and elsewhere. He lives in Kolkata, India.
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