Accreted Seclusion

This unhappy man in the midst of overflowing opulence living like a discolored precious stone in a box of rare jewels was always sad and lonely like a dry wood in a lush green forest, woke up one morning, more dejected than the morning before, threw the flower embossed curtains off the crystal clear window and looked outside to see, maybe for the first time, the scarlet sun rise in the flaming horizon that painted the fresco of rhythm on the rippling water of the river, he heard beckoning him amid the rustle of the dry leaves as the cool morning breeze ruffled them, and as the colors of the dawn touched his heart softly like the falling petals of flowers embracing the hard grey ground, a rare delightful sensation pervasive, he never felt before, and as the music of the river wrapped his senses the way drifting clouds serenade in the emptiness of the mute sky, he walked with his face flooded by sensuous sunshine to the bank of the river where he saw a sand bar emerging proudly from the water in the middle of the river and spreading a silvery sloping bed for a small tree to grow whose outstretched branches were dancing in the southern wind and the emerald leaves were shining in sunburst splendor which he thought were the expressions of happiness and joy that the lone tree could generate as it grew free in an isolated barren bed of sand bar. All these enticed him to sail across the coral sea to a distant barren island and like the tree he let his life take resolute root in desolateness, living to see the dawns come with pristine colors to cheer and the sea turning into tapestry of liquid gold in ecstatic sunset hours, but he couldn’t spread his hands up in the beguiling air the way the branches of the forlorn tree did in ecstasy, his eyes didn’t shimmer under sun soaked sapphire sky the way the nascent leaves of the lonely tree did in happiness, because insular time had made his mind a barren island. seclusion accretes in confines of lonely time… soul seeks shore of bliss August 26, 2020 Contest : Let The Pens Flow-Haibun Sponsor : Jenish Somadas