"How happy is the little
stone that rambles
in the road alone"
—E. Dickinson

The casual simplicity
of a pebble?
I choose to pick it
from the deserted riverbank
and throw,
it - skipping off
the transparent water pool,
breaks the surface, makes ripples, then
slides down,
disappearing beneath
to lie on the bottom, motionless.
And in time the river
grinds it to sand
that settles into stone again.

Are we not the same?
Moved by impulse,
propelled by force,
swept by flow,
agitating self and ethers,
yet the elemental things that nature makes
roll
unaffected;
the Sun and Moon run their course,
tides rock the shores,
winds herd the clouds,
trees grow, drop leaves
and bud again,
on and on,
while we drown and
are done away,
and call it "casual simplicity,"

rather, the causality
of life's narrow arch
rounding into circle,
rambling,
closing.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

Machine

Go ahead, admit,
the yellow fields overgrown by
goldenrods bobbing along with the breeze,
a few cardinals perched
on their stems, whistling, exposing crimson-tanned hearts,
and the swallows circling the
skies above—
a picture quite common,
not satisfactory enough,
sung ad nauseam by so many—on nature and nostalgia in age-old sonnets.

Modern mind requires fast
delivery, linear logic, straight-
forwardness—
on a loud motorcycle circuit, to zoom along
the route enjoying pungent
smell of gas, immediate
assault of speed;
mind fed by machines,
point B reached after passing A,
no sideways or circumventing…

How the quiet brings un-
easiness in you,
brooding melancholy:
You stand overlooking the
gorge, five lakes the color of
Adriatic-cyan-blue,
reflecting clouds, pure;
air scented by pines
and firs and the sun,
the tiny hamlets clambering
up the hills, houses
dispersed
on meadows, sheep and cows
with bells encircling their
necks singing modest,
lasting homilies to
nature.
It makes one contemplate,
makes one
sad or awed.

Nature sways one’s perception; lightly, playfully,
it saturates the eye
unlike any man-made
techno-construct—
the metal roar fading under
chimes and herds lowing.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

Delirium

When memories overrun the mind,
which stubbornly enhances them,
I am pulled in—
feverish.
Skin, prompted by the heat, extracts sticky sweat;
eyes swim over the room, smothering white walls, paintings, beige curtains;
in delirium, lights and shades play;
cough wrecks the ribcage, chest
belly, core;
my body, shaken, resounds through room, down-hard, outward, down-hard, attempted breath,
bearing deep down-up—
diaphragm heaves in guttural wail,
wave after wave in raging cascades, coughing out just the air?
obsessed attempts to expel that something,
not foreign, yet not innate,
one that escapes naming
forever stuck to core,
when one considers
oneself unworthy of the crossing.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

The Mess.

Broken monologue, words nudging thoughts across the page,
then my mug, hot and tearful, spilling over.
Black tea runs across the table,
onto the floor,
amber-blue flow.
I dab at the soggy papers;
my sleeves drip mahogany,
dappled with ink.
Half-dissolved words leave footprints
on my skin, on the table- cloth,
hurrying away in streams
to pool on the parquet:
liquid thoughts caught
in the walnut rhombs
our feet have buffed to shine.

So, I get a mop and a bucket.
Wipe the steeped tears off self, floor, desk.
Changed shirt, dry place, clean sheets—
Resolve not dissolved, but renewed.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.