Watching My Unspeaking Father Board The Bus Home
That tree on the other side of the road
Seems bare.
Only yesterday
I stood by the cemetery,
Mesmerised by the fiery blooms
Hovering over silent bones,
And heard the leaves whispering
Secrets of those who come and weep.
This tree stands silent
And yet,
Defies steel hurtling past
Trying to flee, trying to weave past
Patches, unravel threads,
And create new patterns
That have no place for a tree,
Any tree.
And as they check the tickets,
The exhaust smoke
Blurs the long road
And my tree becomes
A Picasso dream in water.
Seems bare.
Only yesterday
I stood by the cemetery,
Mesmerised by the fiery blooms
Hovering over silent bones,
And heard the leaves whispering
Secrets of those who come and weep.
This tree stands silent
And yet,
Defies steel hurtling past
Trying to flee, trying to weave past
Patches, unravel threads,
And create new patterns
That have no place for a tree,
Any tree.
And as they check the tickets,
The exhaust smoke
Blurs the long road
And my tree becomes
A Picasso dream in water.
Labels: poetry
Selected by incognito |
11:24 |
3 Comments:
Said things about this elsewhere, but glad to reaffirm my awe :)
By the way, there's something I wrote for you, take a look - it's two below yours, and is called (unimaginatively) POEM FOR N.A. :)
Nisha,
it seems a strong poem. One notes the likeably obscure (in a way) relationship between the poem's title, and its content. The concluding dreamy line presents an interesting paradox: that even so "conventionally noxious" a thing as exhaust smoke can effect a "water-like" transformation of perception.
The middle stanza is perhaps the most interesting and difficult -- the "intention" of the bus seeking to create a treeless world.
Permit me to suggest one grammatical correction, okay? In this line:
| That has no place for a tree,
I'd say you want the word "have" in place of "has."
The "unravel threads" reminds me of lines from Gary Snyder's poem "High quality infomation" (from book Left Out in the Rain); but I don't have it on hand to quote verbatim.
Thanks David...
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