May our final kiss visit on a much later day. Well done as always Ashok....Charlie

Yes, HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE --- the great circle of timeless time evolving and revolving into the evolved...

This is what I would call thinking in circles! There is no end, just and everlasting beginning

you're strenght is great and your insight is wonderful, a poet-philosopher :)

Wonderful poetics Ashok. Playful in one sense, yet carrying a serious message in another.

The second stanza is my favorite. It awakens the writer in the reader and beckons to follow you on this labyrinth of spirit-ribbon. Well done, indeed, Ashok.

The moments between ‘here’ and ‘there’, the 'reach' and the 'kiss', are like all other moments, death and life hand in hand. What makes the difference is choosing life over death in any one moment by being PRESENT, "when it STOPS in its beginning And ends not When our lips reach out for each other But arrive not I have decided to be HERE". The reach can be death or the reach can be life, and so too can the kiss, but when we decide to walk hand in hand with the time in presence, not anticipating the moment after or contemplating the moment before, the space too merges, and so the moment stretches, the reach becomes not the means to an end - "Death lingers at every step Every corner, between here and there" - but the MEANING in and of itself. "When the lips eventually arrive Defeating death at every nook and corner Step in step with the TIME They are not deprived of life Which is in the moment in motion...not in the kiss which is death Ahead of time Between here and there" - there is no contradiction here. To put it another way, any moment of presence is not BETWEEN but IS the moment eternal, the moment for which only this moment exists, as the lips reach each moment in timelessness, and when the lips reach and kiss, they do so in timelessness.

I forgot to add how beautiful I think this piece is. Very Beautiful.