As I write this

As I write this
It happens again
Snatching the few lines
that I have in mind.
It guides the striding foot
of the pen, to a vagrant scenery.

There is, in front of my eyes
the yellow-black zebra footpath.
The waiting ground
of our growing up years.
And today, now, yes, presently
We are waiting for the return bus
and the girls are walking across
after the school, with their heads down
counting the pebbles, but smiling
for all the attention we give.
A friend is following his crush
on a newly acquired bicycle.
Others are cheering him to go-get.
She cycles faster now
into some by-lane of memory.
We start teasing each other
till the bus lumbers along
and squeezes another day out of us.

Past gets away
with all its tricks
while I try to make sense of it.
Knowingly it will misguide me
and land me in a new neighborhood.
It often laughs at my familiarity of its scape.
An old prison it is for me.
With a long enough chain.