© By Rupali Gore Lale


The poet's poem was chosen as a 'Best Entry' and among eight poems altogether, out of 24 entries in ILA Magazine's 'Heart Challenge', offered July 18 - July 21st, 2023, on our Facebook Group. The theme asked this question: "Your heart has just scheduled a meeting with you. What's on your heart's agenda that needs to be discussed?" Poets were required to write a poem as if in deep conversation with their heart, and also required to apply at least one of the vocabulary words (from a separate and previous post), inserted into their poem.


In a faraway land,
lived a winsome fairy
she was searching for succor
in a home called heart.
I stumbled upon her and fell,
and heard a gust of guffaw
I saw a fairy perched on me.
She wore heart-shaped attire
and a cape of hearts which tickled me.
She asked me to start a mellow voice
rising from the depths, Voila, she was the heart!
The heart asked me to converse to her highness
herself, the heart thought before speaking,
thinking about the head and I told the heart,
"My head is the captain of my life,
you, O heart, are the fancy of the bards.
You, O heart, are the fantasy of romance.
You are an insane motherly madness,
You are the crazy trove of desires,
Don't destroy me in emotional fires
You can stick to the biology of life
without an iota of any doubt to the aorta."
The fairy fluttered her wings in dismay
Prodding herself, she had a heart full to say.

The heart heard the tintinnabulation
of the temple of thoughts, lost in fog
and spoke, "Without my presence,
you are a thing of negligence,
without my essence, you have a nil existence.
I am a portal of passion.
I am an enclave of courage.
I am an enigma of love.
Love me, or hate me,
but if you ignore me,
you will be a robot or a machine
who will have lost your grin,
and I will have spilled some gin."
I am short of words,
the fairy bid me goodbye
and she disappeared in a second
sprinkling some fairy dust
erasing my unkind notions about my kind heart
and felt the beats of my beloved heart.