Limb to limb
There was a youth I wrote letters to, and he replied.
It went like this for a year or more, a strange business.
I, a man, seeking fresh earth for my dying roots;
He, a sapling, wiry, amorous, and fertile.
Then we met. I turned away from his transparent eyes,
Petrified he would see me dead before I could seize
Some part of his tender life to transplant in me,
To grow a little young before dying once again.
But magically he did not. And I claimed more
And more of his life, in hope that time would stop
And watch my new beginning. But time moved on.
He, the boy, and I are much older now.
He is a tree now, he cannot be called a sapling
Except to mean that he is good for many more years.
We're friends. His life didn't work for me as manure,
I must grow my own from the leaves I shed last fall.
It scares me, and I think it will scare him too,
To say that he is a man-tree now not because he's older.
Its true his limbs danced to the wild tune of the wind.
But he showed me in his trunk a hollow, much like mine.
Sanjib Basu 