Shadows in My Living Room

SHADOWS IN MY LIVING ROOM
(© Malathi Nidadavolu)

Multitudes of shadows
Floating around in my living room
Echoing flocks of cranes
Slithering in marvelous forms
Against the vast expanse of
Universal blue.

I watch
Long faces pulling longer
Same smug looks
Same old threats of mischief
And malice
Constant reparations
The apparently unexpected
And the eternally sweet, indulging characters
The good people
turning wicked or
The bad showing a
remarkable change of heart
All formatted to fit the
Twelve by fourteen screen
In my living room

As I watch
The rising sun,
Showcased by the patio door,
Gliding on to the next longitude
Trailing a blaze of
brilliant colors in motif
Splashed on the horizon

The shadows from last night,
The human beings desperately
Attempting to
Conform to the latest
Attire on the Fifth Avenue
Assimilating into the pale
Of local hue,
The glittering silk
Flashing diamonds
And raising
Millions of meaningless questions.

The Shadows in my living room
Keep changing like
New versions of old tradition
Pandering to self-serving needs
Each wanting to know
What others are doing or
Why others are not doing what they’re expected to do,
Each dictating to the other
The convictions of which
They’re not sure themselves,
Asking the perpetual question
Whether mister so and so
Would go back or settle in the States
Eternally telling each other
They’d have
They could have
They might have but for the kids,
The little brains-in-the-making
Per parents’ programming.

The Shadows
Defining authoritatively
What happiness is
How one should live
Where one’s loyalties should lie,
Correcting each other’s
Grammar, spelling
And punctuation.

The shadows in my living room
Etching new patterns endlessly
Like the flock of birds
Flying from north to south
or from south to north
But always
Homeward bound.

They all
remind me
the words of the little Italian father*
“I am home!”

No politics
No bodies of waters
No treaties by a bunch of nations
Can mince the world
Into bits and pieces
And mark it as his or hers
Yours or mine.

***

(*Rev. Samuel Mazzuchelli, an Italian preacher and founder of the Dominican Sinsinawa Sisters in Wisconsin, wrote in his memoirs, that once he was asked whether he had any plans to return to his home in Italy and he replied, “I am home.”)