DAILY PHOTO: Orchids, Royal Botanical Gardens in Kandy

Taken in May of 2015 at Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

Flowering Mind [Haiku]

the city din drones:
horns, jackhammers, and shouts;
listen to the flowers

Young & Old [Haiku]

bamboo, young & supple,
looms over knurly and
stunted hardwoods

Nettle [Haiku]

i’ve seen nettles,
& i’ve felt nettles —
better the former

Root of Suffering [Haiku]

between boulders
grows a sinewy tree --
robust by ordeals

Two Becomes One [Haiku]

cactus & bush
harmoniously grow into
one silhouette

Cattails [Free Verse]

In a patch of Deccan wetlands,
I see the cattails of my Hoosier youth.

Half a world away,
and nature grants me continuity
that culture can't provide.

I am transported to my youth
by a common landscape.

Indiana -- India,
names almost the same, 
but ever so different...

except the cattails.

Elephantine Baobab [Free Verse]

It's called 
Hatiyan-ka-Jhad
because it looks like 
a huddled herd of elephants --
not only in its corpulence
but also with its rough, gray skin.

So rotund at its base
that it's hard to figure
how its slowly slimming upward taper 
can come to twiggy ends,
and not be a mile tall.

The branches are overly muscular, 
like a bodybuilder who got carried away,
moving from strong and vigorous 
into the domain of science fiction mishap.

It has its own mythology -- 
multiple creation tales about 
how its seed got from Madagascar
to the middle of India half a millennium ago:
tales of fakirs and royal envoys.

It's even been said that the Forty Thieves,
the ones who tormented Ali Baba,
used its hollow as their cache cave.

But it refuses to respond to "Open Sesame" --
so I guess we'll never know.

Knotty Tree [Haiku]

the knotty tree
stretches wide to reach light --
strength from warped fibers