Mithila, the Unfading Melody

I sit beneath the deadened tree in Bartlett Park,
awaiting the breath of spring’s return,
as Mithila tread softly in the corridors of my memory.
A quiet nostalgia stirs within me today, at 58,
as time unwinds itself like a forgotten manuscript,
its edges frayed, its ink now pale,
Yet, Mithila’s footsteps are a sacred echo in my heart.

I hear Mithila’s anklet
a silver chime that dances upon the air,
its melody once woven into my nights of yearning,
now but a faint tremor in this sea of unfamiliar faces.
The sun speaks, veiled beneath the cloud,
its warmth spilling softly into the winds,
yet it cannot bring Mithila back to me.
Here, where glass towers pierce the sky,
where women in a hundred hues pass me by,
None of them is Mithila.

At 58, I long to turn back time,
to touch the tender moments when love was a flame,
But time, alas, is a river with no return.
Only memory, like a restless tide, carries me away,
to the shores of the ending,
where Mithila’s fragrance still lingers in the dusk,
and her footsteps echo forever in the silence.