I see the lazy sway of trees across the way. And I'm lulled into trance by their languid leafy dance. And for the time I've lost there must be some unit cost. Or, perhaps, only gain. There was no angst or pain... only lost moments.
bamboo, young & supple,
looms over knurly and
stunted hardwoods
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.
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.
the knotty tree stretches wide to reach light -- strength from warped fibers
an old fig tree,
gnarled and knotty,
grotesque but strong
ice-glazed branches, stiff in the winter calm: can they flex with wind?
The submerged trees [below] for which Kaindy Lake is famed came about when part of the mountain sloughed off to create a natural dam and reservoir [above.]
a seed sprouts,
stretching toward the light
to be infinite
the !n(tro)verted yogi 