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.

Tree of a Thousand Twigs [Free Verse]

When monsoon rains soaked the soil,
that old tree toppled.

They cut it out of the roadway,
&
I went out to count its rings,
but found it not with hundreds of rings,
but hundreds of trunks --
many no more than twigs.

What a mighty tree 
a pile of twigs pressed together 
can make,
& 
now it's gone.

Knotty Tree [Haiku]

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

Lightning Strike [Haiku]

Oak Fractured by Lightning; Maxim Vorobiev (1824)
shapeless darkness
erupts in blinding form
for an instant

Tree Nature [Haiku]

under the tree sits
a potential Buddha;
human mimics tree

Starry Moss [Haiku]

a mossy cluster 
of gold stars grows densely 
upon a dead branch

DAILY PHOTO: Chipmunk Bullfighter, Amritsar

Taken in Amritsar in April of 2016

Light on Moss [Haiku]

morning light catches
the moss, and i see it for
the first time

Across the Chasm [Haiku]

tree at the fore;
cascades across the chasm,
and my eye wanders