MOHIT MITRA Poet Free verse

The Scroll of Hours

—After Shabbat 31a, Talmud—

I cradle the scroll in my lap—
its fibers hum beneath thumb and palm,
warm as first morning air after frost.


Somewhere, a hinge creaks.
A cat slips past the fence.
A neighbor coughs, low in the hall,
and for a breath,
the question rises on its own:
“What did you do
with what was given?”
The Talmud asks it too,
in its quiet, infinite turning of pages.


Ink smudges where I lingered,
fingers tracing letters like pressed petals;
veins pressed by time.
No tally marks for missteps,
only the pressure of living
leaving itself in every crease.


A sparrow lifts along the lattice,
wings brushing the air like thought.
I feel the rhythm in my chest,
and wonder how many hours
passed unnoticed
while I measured life in fault.


I unfold the scroll further:
light pools across a chipped cup,
a brass key left on the sill.
Dust rises in trembling motes,
smelling faintly of ink and memory.
The hours curl around themselves,
and in the crease of a leaf,
I catch something I cannot name:
attention, perhaps,
or the shadow of reckoning.


A child stumbles along the garden path,
hair catching light, hands trembling
on the gate latch.
I smile—not for comfort,
but because her balance
reminds me how fragile any hour is,
how easily it slips
through the fold of expectation.


I fold the parchment slowly,
edges soft beneath fingertips.
A leaf brushes my wrist;
the wind sighs through the curtains.
Somewhere, a dog barks.
The scroll gathers quietly in my lap,
its questions hovering,
like motes in a shaft of light—
and I am left
holding nothing
but the tremor of hours,
and the faint pulse of possibility


that perhaps
was always
all that was asked.

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