POET FIRST

I am a poet first everything else next

I heard his first line in our first meet

As moments passed with days and nights

I heard his poems in rains and scorching sun

With many ‘of courses’ in our long discourses

With cigar or wine at lunch or as we dine

We were young then and words were handy

And a day I had to part, with him and his poems

I said ‘Thank you for your friendship”

On what I thought was our last meet

He said ‘Thank my poems before anything else

And we shall meet again in a corner of Life Street’

I met him years later and true were his words

Now he was residing on the throne of words

With many poems in the shrine of his thoughts

He said ‘World is round and thus you land

On the same ground with wrinkled feet and hands”

Some too deep, some too long his poems were

Some mellowed sonnets and rest were songs

It was a corner and I met him at life’s dead end

A dawn, by a message he did send

I knew of his illness that cannot mend

I went to his place to have some time spent

I greeted him though wailing ‘Hello Friend’

He in hurry yelled in his last breath

I am a poet first everything else next