Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 4, Number 1. May 2021. ISSN: 2581-7094
Tree
---Puja Rai
Perhaps
it's because she did not speak,
Except
when the wind blew
Still
primitive and naked,
Except
her arms were covered with some necessary green leaves;
Never
walked the man-made roads,
But
she had travelled and reached the earth's womb,
She
spoke not with us
But
with the ear and the atmosphere
In
a language we really could never decipher.
And
then one fine day, she was found guilty
Of
parenting various other species
An
illegitimate mother, an illegal home;
A
land occupied, a punishable crime.
Everyone
gathered around her,
But
neither did she understand the curse words,
Nor
did she understand the pan - smudged spits around her...
The
purification, the examination.
Sita
had failed once again...
A
sacrificial pyre,
A
profitable choir
Another
tombstone, another wonder
Another
skyscraper,
To
occupy the shame and sin of humanity
Another
boundary
Separating
humans from nature
Another
history
Another
legacy…