Turning Over A New Leaf
Turning Over a New Leaf
The fingers (leaf blades) of the coconut trees,
Stretch their benevolent limbs,
For a caress from the sky.
A hug from the monsoon breeze,
An unpredictable lover,
As ever-separated, star-crossed lovers , can be.
The breeze.
Cold with the promise of terrifying thunder, titillating,
Livid lightning, lustrous, and twisty tornados
And sweaty, sultry with the ripe vow of summer salt and sand.
A few feet below the coconut tree,
Its fingers outlined stark black against the sallow skin of a setting sunset sky,
In a gently curved upward inflection,
Rests someone whose, whose eyelashes,
Are just a lighter shade,
Than the soot-coloured silhouette of the tree,
But darker than the rust of its trunk/bark.
Perhaps, its more the colour of curiously curled wood shavings,
They are caught in the current of a dream.
Their face is a hue of yellow,
Eyes, like full almonds,
But like the motion of the salmon pink marshmallow clouds,
That sometimes grace the listless grey sky,
Two rosebud apples blink in and out,
As they mutter, toss and turn,
Caught within the hammock of the dream.
Dimples are like the touch-me-not,
They appear and disappear,
At a smile or a frown,
When lips touch,
Or leave one another’s hold.
The one who rests beneath the tree,
Knows not of the cruel destiny of the tree.
Forever anchored to its roots,
To the gravity, the earth,
Gravity becomes its grief.
The wind, its lover,
Resigned,
TO being a roaming backpacker of the sky.
Restless. Homeless
The tree forever growing,
Trying with all its might
To attain union
With the wind, the sky, the clouds
“What a good pair we’d make.”, the tree thinks
I’m dark, swallowing the light to make my leaves grow, they are limitless,light and free”.
“I’m grounded, they are my wings”.
The tree loses its innocence,
And stops growing,
When it realizes,
The beautiful embrace of the sky,
Wrapped around its black blades,
Are but all, that it will be granted.
That all it will be left with are Mere memories of a kinder childhood love.
Teenage tenderness,
Is all that is left.
This innocent love,
Dying with the realization
Of the long road, to being a single/lone, mature, adult tree.
That is the summary of the story of the tree,
But not its devilish details.
Growing tall,
Wondering if its may finally meet its mysterious… lover?
Young and impetuous,
Before stopping itself, its growth at the cliff, precipice of adulthood.
The wind, the sky, is old and wise, eternally alone,
Grief makes it unanchored.
Countless trees,
It has loved, coaxed into trying to tap into their true tallness, full form.
Embraced caringly, with carbon dioxide, oxygen and light,
It has no heart left to give,
For no tree dared to grow soar high enough to meet it.
No tree allowed itself to feel a passion so great,
No matter the encouragement.
To transcend nature’s programming, the law of the land,
To soar like a kite, with the wind.
The wind, now resigned to its fate,
Thought nothing was going to save it from this futureless state,
It had multiple polyamorous flings.
Its heart never owed nor owned.
It woke with every new seedling ever planted,
But hibernated itself into cynical slumber,
With every rejection; because the tree stopped growing, finally.
Some trees, wept, after their love failed
Until the salt in the coconut water,
Turned in the stagnation of the summer after,
Into a vinegar liquid
Some brew this toxic, traitorous, aftermath of feeling intensely, Quite differently,
Turn their coconut water into toddy.
From clear, to murky and marbled.
Like chalk water.
As the trees were clouded by love,
So their water’s pure,
Tuned intoxicated,
By desire denied.
Having to love a lover,
Always parted,
Meetings thwarted.
Some hung their heads heavy
The weight of a million coconuts,
And thwarted hopes,
Weighing them down,
Till the leaves and coconuts fell,
Just a stump left,
It hung itself dead.
The tree, the wind loved, was no more.
How many more mausoleums/graves tombstones of stumps would the wind have to visit,
An ever-increasing body count.
That is the tale of the wind,
Once bitten, twice shy
Loving every tree,
Loving no tree,
Its heart free, but unfathomable.
Only fools fall.
The trees dig in their roots firmly,
Anchor them to the ground,
Tether them to gravity,
They bury their young crush within the soil.
Suffocate it to death
Within the dark black loamy soil,
Their heart’s blood,
The fertilizer of its fire, its passion
Feeds the soils fertility
“What point indeed,”
Asked the grown-up trees,
“Pining for a lover,
Who has, and has had, many lovers like you, just one amongst many.”
This is the legend,
Of how the coconut trees,
Dropped their tears, the coconut water,
Dropped their heart, the coconut,