
A dream, a Thousand Moments
By Kamalakar Bhat
I am the shadow of my own face,
caught between the mirror’s hunger
and the soft folds of time.
I stretch, I shrink,
but evade every grip.
The ground beneath me quivers,
as if it knows my name,
but when I listen,
I can hear only echoes.
What is the weight of the breath
that tires me
each day, each hour?
A river runs inside me,
but it does not flow
toward a single shore.
I touch the water,
and it is already gone,
a forgotten moment
sinking back into its own mouth.
I wear the mask of who I was,
and yet,
each time I look,
it is no longer mine.
I am a flame,
but do not ask me for a spark.
I am its flicker,
that enter the wombs of the dark.
To be is a labyrinth
with no exit,
where each turn
leads to another door
that never opens.
There is nothing simple about it,
nothing to hold or to keep.
Even the wind cannot touch
the skin it once knew.
So, I let go,
like a field standing still under the rain,
like a rock shining under the waves.
I find a peace
woven from the tangle of things
that slip through my fingers
like sand.
I am not one thing.
I am a thousand moments,
none of them mine alone;
each one
a dream about to bloom,
a seed poised to smile,
a ray aching to dawn.

Kamalakar Bhat teaches Literature in Maharashtra, India. He is an award-winning bilingual writer and a translator. He has published four collections of poems and three collections of translated poems in Kannada and has translated / edited four books in English.