The Dream We Had Together

Reading the poems of Dhruva Thapa is being in the presence of a great heart – one just, generous, and sympathetic. He champions equality: “If every small
voice were heard / And given equal importance / All would grow like a tree / Expecting to touch the sky.” He sympathizes with the living goddess Kumari’s “desire to be a child.” He advocates women’s rights: “Where a goddess may be worshipped / But females are murdered in their wombs / Before they are born.”
Dhruva Thapa writes of his childhood days in Nepal “Where I lived carefree and happy/ Like a bird I could fly anywhere. / Those beautiful rivers and lakes / Where we used to swim till dawn.”

One of his most powerful poems is about serving in the revolution for rights, equality, freedom, and a happy, prosperous life. Sadly, he discovers that once they had won the war, the same suffering and injustices returned. Reluctantly leaving Nepal, he writes of immigrants enduring hardships to achieve the American dream for their children. Some of the most poignant poems are about his yearning for his wife: “We are two bodies with one soul / Living in different parts of the world.” But he never gives up hope: “I am waiting for the moment / When the day
passes / without alarming the night / And night invites
wholeheartedly / At every daybreak the growth of / Prosperity and eternal peace.”

Love, he says, is the answer: “Even a flower blossom doesn’t move / If the wind stops loving it and singing its fragrance.”
—Jim Hughes, Ph.D., Writer and teacher consultant, Bay Area Writing Project