Oct 6, 2014 Original Poetry
Out of Water and Out of Air
©October 6th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
The fish sails,
Head half in, half out,
Floundering, diving,
Coming up again, diving
Neither in, nor out,
Neither here nor there.
Suffocating in air,
Drowning in water.
Tail lashing back and forth,
It sees the golden disk
Of sun from below,
Comes up eagerly
To drink in the light,
But gasps, as the rare
Air hits unaccustomed gills.
Writhing in terror
And ecstasy, before
It sinks back in,
Singing of the light.
And unformed lungs
Struggle to grow
In a body too light, too
Easily pierced by bait.
Surrounded by fish
Which flow easily, like song,
Through that twilit world,
At ease with body and fins
Unconscious and joyous
Twirling in sport,
Racing away in terror:
Prey chased by predators
Chased in their turn, it
Swims on and on, raises
Face to the light, sinks back in.
Is that all there is to this?
This constant striving
To no avail, for no purpose?
This struggle, this wriggle
Through murk, and to lurk
In dark spaces, with waving
Fronds that invite, but bite.
Is this all there is?
Don’t tell the fish
That struggle ennobles.
There is nothing noble in it,
Except in the minds
Of those who would weave words
To lead the blind.
Where is a world for a
Fish such as this?
Struggling at the confluence
Of air and earth and water,
It makes a bubble-dream.
Where is a world for a
A fish such as this?
It twists and leaps
And looks up skywards,
And dies, it dies, full
Of desire and pain.
And when it dies,
Will a new Creature emerge,
Straddling air and land and water,
Poised and cool,
Master of all it surveys?
Or will the creature
Look around, and yearn
And weep for something
We cannot yet see?
Neither land, nor sky
Nor water nor fire
Will quench its yearning.
And so, it goes.
While the air and sky,
And land and water,
Swirl darkly, promising
Nothing.
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Tags: #Fish, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, #Striving, #Struggle, Evolution, not belonging, not in one's element
Feb 22, 2013 Original Short Stories
The End and the Beginning – A Narrative of a New Race ©By Vijaya Sundaram January 24, 2012
The planet swung around on its appointed course around the sun, dutifully, tiredly, imperceptibly tilting ever more to the right. Lands grew cold and hot and cold and hot again. Forests died, and mountains grew taller. Tsunamis rose up and islands sank. The desert blazed unmercifully. Birds fell out of the sky. Quietly, entire species died, as the decades drifted by like seaweed on dead oceans. The polar caps melted, and methane clouds rose into the air like ghosts promising a holocaust of fire, ready to ignite, ready to unleash their fierce tendrils of blazing death on the straggling populations of weary humans who eked out their lives in the few safe places on earth.
It was into such a world that the Stranger came drifting through the clouds in her vehicle from a faraway universe.
The Stranger stood, light as air on her feet, straddling continents, and gazing hopelessly around, while the vehicle blended into the very air, so as not to set off any methane into instability. Fire-power was not what propelled her vehicle. What propelled her vehicle was a substance which had no name, and would never be discovered by humans.
Sorrow filled her face as she looked at the tiny dwellings of the people huddled in the mountains, the history of the rise and fall of the human race in their eyes, as they gazed about them at the increasingly hostile world they had inherited from their rapacious forbears. Clad in their animal skins, in shelters of scrub and brush, they gazed around, their scarred visages showing apathy and absolute despair. Scattered around them were the bones of animals, and small straggling fields of corn. There was no evidence of fire.
I should never have seeded this planet, she thought to herself. I should have gone to another star system. This very planet is fighting my descendants. The planet hates them. The planet wants to shake them off like fleas. What shall I do?
And an idea came to her. To make it all happen, she needed a hundred years or two. Time passed, as time does. Eventually, what she wanted, willed, worked for, happened. The planet straightened itself to the exact tilt necessary for life to sustain itself. All the methane released from the melting of snows on polar caps was gathered up into her spacecraft, excess carbon dioxide powered it, and fresh, oxygen-rich air swirled hopefully around the planet. Rains fell, tides rose and ebbed in predictable patterns, and new, green forests sprang up where they hadn’t been for a while.
Humans in the tropics looked around them, and saw fresh green where there hadn’t been any for decades. Polar caps began to freeze again. Others on the far northern ends of continents looked up and felt snowflakes falling. Nobody knew what it was, but it felt good.
And the migrations began. But this time, things were different. This time, the earth purred. Humans weren’t fleas. Humans were benign extensions of earth’s self. They lived with nature, freely, joyously. Then, they discovered the use of fire. This time, something held them back. They looked up. The sun smiled down.
And though it all started all over again, humans had evolved. Their bodies held all the heat and light, air and water they needed. A new race began, straightened its shoulders and rose up into the air.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Beginning~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Hope, Aliens, Beginnings, Climate Change, Endings, Evolution, Human Life, Planet Earth, Strangeres