He Holds An Umbrella

He holds an umbrella, and walks the road.

From the sun he hides, from the rain he shelters, or does he try to mask his life’s load?

The nondescript mundane umbrella has nothing much by way of being remarkable about it,

A staid black color, a customary metal handle, with a “u” end to it.

Nondescript is his umbrella, staid and dark,

just as his life is perhaps, harsh, blunt and stark.

The umbrella never leaves his hand, always upright held above the head, come rain or shine.

Under it, he finds the anonymity, the obscurity for which, by nature, he so desperately pines.

He carries it in the crowd, making it easier to get lost in humanity’s wide open ocean,

No one worries anyways about him, he is the faulty clog in this system of perpetual motion.

Under the umbrella, like the sharp metallic frame,

Is his  existence, mute, meek and lame.

There is a sheen of the metal,

like the bright plastic flower and its plastic petal, Just the glean on top, hollowed corroded and eaten from inside.

Under the umbrella as he walks, from who is he running away, from whom does he want to hide?

He lost his voice, his aspirations were stifled.

Sometimes his own fault, while sometimes the world had him muffled.

Directionless as he wanders, the umbrella is the only thing he keeps dear to heart,

Wishes his was as colorful and bright as the other’s, yet never ready, from the umbrella, to part.

For cover him it sure does, not just from the prying questioning eyes and the vagaries of nature,

 His insecurities, his fears, his failures is what it nurtures. Subsuming his identity, encompassing his self,

 The umbrella is he, an inseparable part of his conscious alive self. Would he just peep from under the umbrella at the world askance,

Smell the coffee, join the race, and take a chance?

Would his life be any different with the umbrella closed, Would times be any different, with joy in abundance and no misery imposed?

How could he know, though, for he is just a common man, Afraid of treading off the beaten path, doing what is told to him, not what he thinks he can.

 And so as always, he holds an umbrella, and walks the road.From the sun he hides, from the rain he shelters, or does he try to mask his life’s load?

~ Ameet Bhuvan