galloping through punctuations


sometimes
on glum days like this 
when the sky broods gray
and the world has no cheerful colours to splay
one wonders
about punctuation.
what would happen if
our lives ran past
all the commas and fullstops
and galloped through 
the semi-colons and the dashes
and the much favoured
ellipsis . . . what would happen if
we ran through the question marks
(that punctuate so much of our lives
every day) - in the tumult
of our motion 
we would 
rush through all our masks 
rushing through our differences
true and perceived (sometimes 
i think you make too much of them) -
and running on breathlessly
would we come to a desperate sigh
and stop to catch our breath?

at that point, 
we might see waiting for us
a mere exclamation mark;
but perhaps
by then it is 
already too late. 


amit mukerjee
albany, 10 Dec 2002