Fruition

I watch a seedling sprout.
 
The way it bids adieu
to the grass and morning dew, 
almost unnoticed, 
outside the concern of the world. 
 
The seedling could spread its arms,
graze the electric line, get tangled 
in the passing grief of the creeper. 
 
On this parched concrete strip, it
could imagine itself to be a hand pump
—the trickle from its lip
quenches the thirst of sparrows.
 
A possible easy chair for wary crows.
An engineering marvel
for adventure-loving squirrels.
 
That the seedling might reach me is hope.
The eye merely peeps; It knows its cage.
 
I find my fruition
in shadowing a seedling in my garden.

---

Postman

My B&W dream is a tree.
From its nest, Jacques Tati says:
A postman in haste 
is the pupa of a cargo jet.
 
My technicolor dream is a hill.
From its slopes, Neruda says:
A postman on the ascend 
is the struggle to know a poet.
 
The rhythm of soft pedalling
challenges the crickets,
reinstates an older silence.
 
A paddy field resurfaces, along
the contours of the rolling wheel.
The shadow of whistling
dissolves in the shadow of birds.
 
A pond without kids to dive,
the calm dial of time—
it longs for its lost hands.
 
Yet it lets 
the shadow of a postman
glide through its belly like a fish.
 
Will the postman 
be a dove that returns
with an olive leaf to Noah’s Ark*?
 
Will they deliver a longing,
the calligraphy 
of an erstwhile alphabet?

---