Up above the world so high

To and fro. To and fro.

The never ending, velvety blanket of inky black stretching above. The same blue-black around, beside and behind.

The wind atop a mountain at night.... Ever heard it? An invisible, ginormous millstone at work- that’s what it sounds like.  No breezes and zephyrs here. Just the wind, and laughter.

Hearing nothing, but the whoosh of the wind rushing into your ears; past you ; after you ; with you - a whispering, stalking presence.  

And the scale of the rocks: immense, towering, two hundred times your girth and three hundred times your height. Big, so big that everyone feels little. The mammoth summit looking down in disdain at the diminutive person’s antics; at it sparring with the wind; at.... the wind.

You can almost hear it grumble affectionately at the wind. The wind with all its wily ways.

                   H

            G

        I

 H

I see a carpet of fairy lights spread out beneath me, whirlwind in my tummy.

L

    O

        W

The impenetrable cloak of the firmament.

The wind is a live wire let loose: rattling, isolating, accommodating and dictating. No wonder the mountain’s fond of it.  Thank God for huge metal clamps that hold on with a tenacity equal to the gusty element’s.

The eye of my heart is stretched out below, glimmering; twinkling; pulsating with light, the grey asphalt arteries calm and quiet. Now, a womb to the sleeping alive who are dead asleep.

                         h

                   g

                i

How  h                    can I go?

                                                   A spinning top in my stomach.

Everything is slave to the wind. Even the formidable mountain, whose winding paths are full of curvy secrets and secret hairpin curves.
Seduced by its murmurs moving in sway to its rhythm I see with my watery eyes

Blue lights

                       Yellow lights

White lights

                        Red lights.

Will my hair touch the ground if I bend backwards and my feet the sky?

Now, I’m moving parallel to a silken black shroud.  Albeit, one covering the alive.

Unlike my heart’s eye, nothing’s verdant here. Every available bit of moisture, every bit of life is drawn out to fuel the invisible furnaces of the wind......

Sparse spindly vegetation sporadically adorning the bare rocks exposed to the wicked wind.  Oh, how keenly they must feel it slicing at them relentlessly; their varied contours and forms evidence of its artful cruelty.

That one looks like a crocodile.

                                                      That one there, a lot like a human face.

I smile, wincing as my chapped lips stretch. I feel it keenly too. Its icy cold touch as it loops, whirls, dips and twirls around us.

........to fuel the invisible furnaces of the wind and to infuse my hair with existence.  My medusa’s locks, newfound companions to the wind, together they defy gravity, each personifying the other.

Churning, spinning, heaving, flitting......

With a vitality of its own.

The wind pushing us: the swing and me

High

Whirling in my tummy,  so I screw my eyes shut and squeal with glee.  Can’t see anything except the patina of warm yellow.

Now I only hear. And feel

            Low

Toes scraping the ground.

Laughter in the background-maybe, there’s an age limit to do this.

Twisting the chains to spin faster than the wind. Perhaps, I've spun back in time. Maybe the velocious, hypersonic wind  and isolated mountains create an insular realm impervious to time.

Perhaps, I’m just giddy. Giddy but happy.  

Up

Creaking chains.

 I’m flying. I am the wind-powerful, frisky and bursting with energy. Also, closer to heavenly territories.  If I jump off before the swing stops will I land there?

Down

Legs pumping the air, kicking the wind out of it, and laughing; because I have been right from the start.

To

Up above the world so high

Fro

Diamonds at my feet. Not in the sky.

On the mountain tops,

Swinging it in style.

Falak