I wonder what happy thoughts ricocheted in those gilded corridors,
when we stumbled through life, playing cross and noughts.
The rusted corridors of time still roar
with those scattered notes of that juvenile rhyme,
sailing along in joyous paper boats,
bobbing up and down
searching for the lost notes of that full song
in the waltzing breeze.
Many a tiny note had hit a monarch butterfly,
who stopped in mid-air, her wing throbbing,
the vibrant note bobbing up and down
perched on her flamboyant wing.
Hear, o hear that foaming cascade of nimble footfalls?
Sparkling and tantalizing;
with a thimble full of wants, a pocket full of pebbles ,
a high-pitched treble and a mouthful of full-throated guffaws,
those juvenile jeers and taunts , making and breaking laws.
“Sing, Baby sing”, chorused the peer group,
trooping towards the rabbit hole from where the rabbit fled
on hearing the thundering feet,
blundering towards its sanctum sanctorum.
Unfazed, we continued to hum, banging, clanging,
dangling and hanging from those trees of childhood,
their leaves crackling with anxiety.
Do they still crackle as they crackled then,
when we were footloose and fancy free.
And ah, so unshackled!
