- Antarctica Journal - https://www.antarcticajournal.com -

Poem – No Man’s Land (By Rony Nair)

van Diemen’s land eclipsed in artwork

A solitary Joshua tree

curling, fetal, looking outwards

its instinct tailored,

to fold itself in.

 

and wrap yourself around your arms even

as you scream “not here”

 

take me somewhere else you say

ribald, Nostradamus hued.

 

Alone.

one wondered if you,

who liked the drumbeats to suggest

how much of music you knew

knew nothing else mattered.

Bio:

Rony Nair slogs as an oil and gas Risk Management “expert/ director/ Vice President/consultant”-up on the greasy pole! He’s been 20 years in the industry since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Extensively traveled. Dangers fronted often. But that’s his day job. The one that pays for bread and bills.

He’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. (They’ve been) the bedsit at the end of a long day; the repository that does the sound of silence inimitably well. Not unlike a pet; but with one core difference- the books do suggest, educate and weave a texture that marginally provides streams of thought that are new. And one of the biggest pleasures of his life, is certainly holding a treasured edition in one’s hands. Physically.

Rony’s been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a published photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and currently writes a regular column for two online journals; one of them widely read over South India. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts!