After rEtirement

After retirement,
P K Routray

I am retired,
even though I feel that for doing a job further I am not tired.
I feel that I am hale and hearty,
But I got superannuated when I had reached the age of sixty.
That is my country’s law,
to this we all simply have to bow.
I thought of going to the needy and poor,
to help them to help myself as per religious scripture.
But amidst poverty I could hardly differentiate their need from their greed,
further so far to find means and methods I could not succeed.
I had learnt from experts and exponents of life’s happiness and beauty,
that to get happiness one has to be a child in thought and action with simplicity.
I thought of writing poems like a school student,
without knowing the significance of metaphor, meter and rhythm and many such a poetic component.
I saw some prosaic poems without rhyme or rhythm,
similar to my school essays and passage writings meant to pass my school exam.
I started reading many a prosaic poem,
I could not find any idea behind or substances in them to fathom.
There also I could not find any logic in the illogical concept like apple coming out of rose stems,
How does a child or ignorant person like me understand and create such poems?
I was an engineer with background of science and mathematics,
I found my sixty years of such life could not penetrate to these basics.
Ultimately I started like a high school boy,
writing something at the end rhyming the lines in my own way.
as my concentration and focus of the day goes for such childish creation,
I do not find time to have any of life’s tension.
Many great encouraging reviewers are there to cheer,
Hence for any comment on my writing I do not fear.
My friends and neighbors may be laughing at my childish way of engagement,
My wife also opposes such aloofness from household affairs for which she is vehement.
I do not have time to listen to their comments because of my commitment,
Hence I am spending my retired time so far happily with contentment.