Sunil Sharma

The French windows ajar
Billowing curtains

Lit up by an afternoon sun;
Few framed pictures, widely apart,
The old faces smiling at the stately piano
Gathering dust.

A bird song echoing
In the villa over
A brown-denuded valley;
Notes, returning reluctantly
To their natural source hidden
Somewhere in the pine tree,
Like an undelivered letter back
To its hopeful composer of few lines
A century ago, when letters were the main medium
Of delivering long-distance messages to eager eyes.

Now---solitude covered with dust, untrod.