Love in the birches
If i bring a sapling back
And grow it amid cement, pushed six inches away,
And it does, tall but lonely,
Would it say "Lost in the humans"?
Let me feel the ease of being,
And the ease of being lost in the birches.
It's their habitat, and their gentle sway
Tells me i'm welcome, so i like to think.
No harbinger of concrete, no leafy dream to buy,
No axe to grind, and be it all as it may,
I'll trace, in due course, my long way home.
And stand flat on paved paths
And tiled floors, not like this, angled
On sloping hillside, one hand
Steadying at this birch's sturdy trunk.
No, I will not kidnap a sapling back.
Birches, be not lost in the humans.
Sanjib Basu 