The tree dried a long time ago.
It's a dead tree, they said.
Something in its frozen dryness
seemed to say
look here inside
I am alive.
Twice they came with axe and spade
twice they were called away
earth muscles stretched and relaxed
the wind sighed as it blew.
The dry sky poured this year
the monsoons came pelting down
rivulets sloped down to the roots.
The dead tree tasted nectar
stirring the sap of life inside.
Morphing the dry anatomy
Into a green body,
with budding leaves.
The big round shining leaves unfurled
dressing it in emerald green and pink
the wind danced past lifting the bridal veil.
Buds peeped with flowers and fruit
the magic wand of earth and water
the mystery of wind and sky
palpitating life restored in full.
Ahhh it was a fig tree!
Bio
Dr. Roopali Sircar Gaur, PhD. bilingual poet-performer, writer, environmentalist, and social justice activist. Roopali taught English at Delhi University in India. She has written for peer-reviewed journals, and served on academic conference panels worldwide. Roopali’s poems have been translated into Hindi, Bangla and Telugu, Her poems are housed at Stanford University’s Digital Humanities initiative, Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic, and in the University of Bath’s Transnational project. She is the Consulting Editor for Different Truths, an online global participatory journal, and the Poetry Editor for the Aspiring Writers’ Society.