Shirani Rajapakse

Zuccotti Park Rises
 
You watched from your window as they came in numbers

large enough to take over the world.

One by one they built a park of humanity.

I watched from my PC, my window to there – where you were.

Sitting snug in my room I watched the world play

out scene by scene on my screen.

Dressed in the colours of the day they camped outside

your window as you watched sipping your coffee or juice.

Or whatever. Crowds teaming from the four corners of the earth

merged and blended in a rainbow of perfect harmony.

The world’s a melting pot of ideas brimming over and spilling

across the globe. A single voice raised in unison, calling,

calling out and the winds carried the words over

miles of ocean and land to houses so distant, like mine.

Ripples of words, thoughts and dreams ran

the world as you watched from your window and I sat at my

desk and tapped on keys trying to make

sense of it all. Glass, steel, gleaming, reaching higher and higher

into the skies you looked out at trees of glass rising, rising,

splendid decadent, a world far removed from mine. While I tried

to imagine as I looked out the window here to see

trees, crotons in all hues like the many splendid hues of the people

camping out before your eyes. So close you could reach

out and touch. I was so far away. Many, many

miles away on another continent, another country, another

plane of consciousness yet just the same as you. A piece

of humanity yearning to spread my wings and fly.

I perched on my window sill and looked out at the myriad

colours of the leaves on the trees bending, whispering words from you

as you stared at the colours before you, fall shades

made bright by the colours of life. And as we watched from our

windows separated by time and space and distance

a new icon was born. Poets chanted, singers dreamed and politicians

ranted while the people of the world united in perfect accord.
 
 
 
Shirani Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan poet, playwright and fiction writer. She is the author of Breaking News (Vijitha Yapa 2011), a collection of short stories that was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award 2010. Shirani’s poetry and short stories have appeared in web magazines such as The Smoking Poet, New Verse News, The Occupy Poetry Project and anthologies such as Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, World Healing World Peace, Every Child Is Entitled to Innocence and Voices Israel Poetry Anthology 2012. Her poetry has also been featured on the radio program Verses in Motion. Visit her websites at shiranirajapakse.wordpress.com and shiranirajapakse.weebly.com.