by Vinita Agrawal
It was you all the way, my love.
Right from the days we dangled
on air roots of the banyan tree
till all things herbaceous died down to the ground
in the last autumn of life, it was you. Only you.
You taught me the subtleties of life
through ferns and woody evergreens
through trees that lived on leafless forever,
through some that died and grew back again
when a new season arrived.
You taught me how to inhale the scent of flowers from photographs
Taught me to whip up images of mulch, roots, sunlight and breeze
…the humility of wrangled branches
that hosted glossy hairless leaves.
Songs of abandonment I heard in apple blossoms,
the silent melody of earth through soil up to its neck in flowers,
complete stillness through gales surrendering to valleys
to then disappear forever.
Love was as simple as a rustic four-petal rose growing wild.
It smelled like mountain mist lobbed in pine cone tassels.
As warm as native violets and golden poppies,
sitting in a vase on a table for two.
Your eyes were a cinnamon ocean – fragrant like hearth
where all my rivers met, where I merged at dusk
to lay calm at night. The same night
that made wet rot out of people, turned them to fuzzy spores.
Sometimes when cold and chill claimed my heart
and the world became elliptical,
you held my hand, showed me nymphs hiding inside daffodils
so that I laughed…and then you laughed with me.
