Quiet Reflections

 
It was an age upon a continent—
Where lived a Raja, loved by subjects all,
To be a paradigm of Paradise,
 
When he’d parade his wealth and fam’ily.
To have them all anticipate the day
They’d be invited to the Palace Grande,
 
And given, one by one, and made by hand,
The small sweet golden pollen honey cakes
By his belov’ed and beau’tiful wife.
 
The poor and lowly caste, they had a pride,  
As some would cultivate, some cook’d & clean’d
While tending to their master’s growing brood.
 
And some would graze & groom the Raja’s stock
Of prized thoroughbreds out in the paddock
Surrounded by a wooden picket fence.
 
Yet even though these were the happy times,
The shadow of a darker past would loom,
And crept the fertile fi’elds to the Grande.
 
At first of sunlight when his wife would pray
And fold her arms into a morning’s breeze,
She disappeared from off the balcony.
 
Abducted to the mountains far away?
No one would know her or where she was from.
The Raja’s lady’s on a pilgrimage
 
That’s what the grieving Raja told his flock,
As servants, slaves & staff all had their doubts.
They never knew him as the placid sort,
 
Nor a Pharisee to the peasant clan;
Who’d chastise the lowly as a pretense
To have them still believe he was their Sage.
 
They chose a one among of whom they knew,
A guru who would fast and meditate;
A holy man’s perception what to do.
 
He rose to visit by a quiet pond,
And met the grieving Raja kneeling there.
“She’s coming back a fortnight and is safe.”
 
The Raja looked up in astonishment.
“Do not lie to me, we’ve searched ev’rywhere!”
The holy man smiled, pointing to the pond.
 
“Gaze on and in the water till you see.”
So gentle did he speak, the Raja looked:
With joy, he saw himself next to his love!