An age Old Wail!

 Amidst a jungle
Of jutting high concrete,
Lives a dwindling grove
Hidden discrete,
With few plants
Waiting to be tree,
And an old barren tree
With bald branches
Hanging out free,
resting on occasional support
Of a swinging green lot
Tells a tale
Of an age-old wail.

Exhausted and tired
Standing all wired,
The barren tree repeats the tale,
Of an age-old wail.

Trees
Those still are green
Strong and firm with luring sheen
Call out their friends
Swinging fleshy ends
Nudging each-other
Discussing together
Something about the old barren tree
Or, the insensitive surrounding
May be
Or, the plants beneath them
Squirming to rise and lean
And reach out to feel
The sky, they haven’t seen.

Fearful of sounds
Of leaping human feet,
And suffering the bane
Of growth-born heat,
Grimaced they watch
the dangling weapons
Fingers reaching at them
and claw sharpens.
Feinting the grove to give way
For reasons vague and fey
How it feels
When shaken by the roots
Or, uprooted
Can only be felt
By a life, which is living
With dignity and drive.

How does it matter
If it’s tree or a human?
Sacred or common?
For, all bleed blood.
Hapless and desolate eyes
Full of salt and mud
Maimed and handicapped
Can only view
and say, I wish 
I could save you.

Bare and open
Wounds scorched and dry
Red-faced sun
Scurries to set shy,
A waft patting the cheek
Reminds of hope getting bleak.

With the pain
Veins shudder,
Uprooted, but living
Loaded on a ladder
The grove is shoved
In to a van
Like a corpse
Or, a half-dead man
On an ambulance
That goes for postmortem;
What remains beneath
Is blood and sputum,
Dismembered limbs
Branches and root
Loosing breath, but cling
To a revelation
That their children are the next.

No one stops, no one opposes
No one can read the evil text

True! ...
How difficult it is 
to save our people
Weak and exposed, tired of grapple
Ask the Barren tree! ...
Who stood by its seedlings
To grow them free
And to bear the testimony
Of decay and felony,
Which he still bemoans
With frail brittle bones
He still tells the tale
Of an age-old wail.

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                -Mrityunjay-