It is well past mid-night.
I am wide awake.
My table lamp is lit up.
The room is semi-dark.
The small clock on the table: tick-tocks,
With the ever-perpetual sound of:
Tick! tock! tick! tock...
There is a kind of mindless bliss,
In listening to the unbroken release.

Silence and tick-tock are swaying together.
Everywhere there are rhymes:
Rhyming with silence and tick-tock.
I hear around me music,
Pulling me to its lap.
By the hours fluttering past…
My eyes are like the sun’s eye.
I know, I am beyond sleep,
And misty dreams.

Dubai
9th March 2010

Geeta Chhabra

From the book: An Indian Ode To The Emirates by Geeta Chhabra