Ladder.. Nirmal bhattacharya

 

He was climbing up
a derro ladder inherited from his
long-dead dad.
The ladder, and he immensely felt
proud of it, aged in fierce succession
of years one after another.
Words went round that due to an undetected
disorder in his mysterious make-up
he believed without rhyme and reason that
the ladder had to be immortal to the day of resurrection of his moon-eyed father.

So, that day he decided to climb up
that ladder as far as he could
because someone he could not distrust even
at the risk of his own life
convinced him like an incurable disease that all
the honey of the earth was hanging somewhere up
in the sky among the moldering clouds.

So, he kept on climbing up
one step and the next and then the third.
And there was a long long tortuous que right below
the first step of the ladder.

©️ 2021