In An Alley

Passing Shades of Time

I found this little something in my stack of musings. An old piece from my college days..

Last night while strolling through an alley
I heard the north wind blowing right around me
When all of a sudden I thought of you

Was it the chill of the night
Or just the silence in my mind
But I swear I saw you smiling at me

I did see you
Down that darkened alley
I heard ye’r footsteps fading away
And you were in my arms once more.

Gautam Dhar
2002
Lansing, MI

Comments So Far..
  • T A RAMESH 1 February, 2008 at 3:18 pm

    An haunting scene! A dream or reality? The formative time of life experience is immortal to everyone. That too lonely walk makes one conscious of the inner heart so strong that one feels hallucination as it is depicted In An Alley quite eminently!

  • Gautam 1 February, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    Thanks 🙂

  • ashwini 2 February, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    This piece makes me remember a poetry by Rudyard Kipling learnt in the school. I remember, our English teacher, (who was our headmistress too) Sosamma Jacob, used to teach us English, and she taught ua this poem, we children were quite frightened at that time.

    The last line “But there is no road through the woods” this gives me the impression that this is the view of another person that only the main charachter can see any trace as if it is an imaginationa personal vision/ halucination of some kind. It is only visible from the memorys that are held within this place. The remenisant views of childhood and a place that to all those who have come after is nonexistant.

    The Way Through the Woods.

    They shut the road through the woods
    Seventy years ago.
    Weather and rain have undone it again,
    And now you would never know
    There was once a road through the woods
    Before they planted the trees.
    It is underneath the coppice and heath,
    And the thin anemones.
    Only the keeper sees
    That, where the ring-dove broods,
    And the badgers roll at ease,
    There was once a road through the woods.

    Yet, if you enter the woods
    Of a summer evening late,
    When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
    Where the otter whistles his mate.
    (They fear not men in the woods,
    Because they see so few)
    You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
    And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
    Steadily cantering through
    The misty solitudes,
    As though they perfectly knew
    The old lost road through the woods. . . .
    But there is no road through the woods.

  • Gautam 2 February, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    Hi Ashwini, Kipling is one of my fav. writers. Thanks for sharing the poem!

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