The Piper

I sit waiting breathlessly for the twilight skies
And for the music of the deuri piper
That floats across the streams with the breeze
From the dark shadows of the moranghar
Hidden behind the trees.

The village yonder looks sleepy and dark.
But it is full of stories that lure me.
I have never crossed the stream
The old folk here have warned us long ago:
Whoever has stepped across has seldom returned.

Sometimes as I sit awaiting the music of that world
I imagine a face to my shadowy piper
And a possible song to his tunes.
Sometimes I build little paper boats of desire
Often I fear the discovery of my dreams…

They are not to be mingled with;
The wise folk repeatedly tell us.
Us and them have separate worlds.
We are huntsmen of the gods, they the root diggers.
The stream divides us and our destinies.

Why cannot it then stop the piper’s notes mid-air?
I wonder staring at the serene waters.
There again the music starts tonight
Unaware of this world that wakes to its sound
Unaware of the worlds it awakens within me.

I sit restless, overjoyed yet anxious.
Absentmindedly I finger my lokaparo
As the music fills into my room
The music of homecoming, of nostalgia
And perhaps of new-found love…

Somewhere hidden by the veils of the night
Somewhere lost in his own worlds
Somewhere among the shadows and the haze
Sits my deuri piper
Under the same twilight skies.

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