Be(com)ing

I’m made of a sunlit dawn,

when the tree rained yellow all o’er me;

my right foot on the bamboo-stair

which led to the erumadam* stacked with books, pens, 

pencils, notepads, a couple of canvases and paint tubes.

I raised my left foot,

to scale the rest of the fifty plus feet from ground.

Arms on the rope which slung down

tethering the slightly swinging cane-steps,

my eyes fell on a snail

that slowly sailed across the bamboo-rod. 

The mollusc

reminded me of Palghat umbrellas

in my grandmother’s tales;

its tentacles mapping the route,

leaving a slimy trail.

I looked at my dangling foot.

As if a rethinking Vamana,

I watched the sluggish pathway:

a three-hundred-million-year-old patterned

journey inherited by this slow-paced saint.

I saw my face on the Fibonacci spiral on the calcareous shell

and stepped down reverentially

to let my ancestor journey 

beyond bamboo, tree, 

canvas and pens

into the abyss

of my past.