The Fallen And The Felled

 An Elegy

My beloved Kadam tree whose final farewell took place two days ago - seen here a few months before Amphan felled her

The thud of axe on dead wood 

An eerie ring when it chances upon a still-living cell -

sap-filled and hope-filled till the axe deals the final blow,

and it shatters, spurting sap-blood.

Trees don't die all at once,

           they rebirth themselves many times

before you write them off as mere wood.

All around me dull, empty thuds,

Killer-axe striking the dead, till they are robbed of all dignity.

And still there are new green sprouts on them,

crying Life!

*

*

Cut to the ring of metal against a brave living tree,

that stands breathing love at us as we betray it.

Now that is a different sound!

The tree pours forth its blessings – even as it cries.

The tree can't run…

 

The executioner's axe and that of the undertaker,

the same weapon, the same hands,

different strokes ..

Weren't undertakers meant to give dignity to the deceased?

Wonder where these fallen trunks and limbs are destined to go?

To light the pyres of the non-covid fallen,

For the covid-felled need hi-tech to save their

souls - and our bodies?

Or will they light the hearth fires of those who scrounge for

leftover scraps from vegetable carts

and warm them on the street over heaps of twigs

and trash?

The ones that fall through the cracks in every

system - another kind of fallen ...

*

*

Will that fallen neem be the chosen of the Lord,

and come to life again as images of Jagannath, 

who rides his chariot in splendor, come July?

Will our stalwarts' hearts ring out once more under the caress of a dhaak-maker's hands,

or those of a wood carver who would bring their grace to life?

Albeit one frozen moment of that life with stories enfolded in its curves ...

Will that breath of life dance in eddies
through the nuances of a Mrindangam, 

fine-honed to echo  the cries and whispers my senses were tuned to pick up in their last birth?

*

The grain looks me in the eye,
 leaving a farewell message for me as they haul the log away.

As I stop to caress a limb of my beloved fallen, I see history writ between those bleeding lines.

History that I will, maybe understand,

when I too am among the fallen.

                       

-        Chakra Incognita

I am reading it here

 

PS - see the gap in image #2 where the green tree was bumped off while I was writing this. And the fallen kadam(#3,4,5) turning from gold to russet to brown, detaching itself slowly from this life and location

Uprooted on the road

Post and poem edited on 4/2/2021 as we let our tears nurture the soil for new life