Icicles hang like fingers and knives
from the coniferous trees, as if,
winter has rained
weapons and cut off hands all night
on mountains,
valleys and on the road to the monastery
atop a hill in northern Bhutan
where I am going. It seems to be an end
of a war, somewhere, at last
It is calm and peaceful everywhere
I search out
a block of ice which traps a green fern inside
like a memory
It reminds me of a Kim Ki Duk film
and much more about life
Fog weeds out
tea estates and pine forests in Tindharia hills
with a whitewash till noon
Cart road, railway tracks,
dark gorges, occasional vehicles,
silent waterfalls sleep
deep inside the folds of a double mist
Before the fog lifts at noon,
I find
white crows flying, white mustard fields,
a white church
near some white rhododendrons;
down the village,
a white tractor, empty,
heading for a white post office
On top of the hill,
I notice two identical houses, side by side
White
All their windows and doors are closed
Twin houses hemmed by white pine forests
like Himalaya’s bushy eyebrows,
old
We are happy in our secret plant ways,
rooted to the birthplace,
looking for the sun,
trying to find all rhombus patterns
and break them,
preserving ancient moon-blotches
on our ring-fingers and forearms
Living an introvert person’s exciting life
for nothing,
We grow a deciduous forest
in autumn
at the back of our mind
where oddly crimson banyan figs
lie scattered
throughout the summer months like multiple desires
of a plant’s heart
Sekhar Banerjee is a Pushcart Award nominated poet. The Fern-gatherers? Association (Red River, 2021) is his latest collection of poems. He has been published in Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, Muse India, Kitaab, Better Than Starbucks, Verse-Virtual, Panoply, Muse India, Bengaluru Review, Cafe Dissensus, RIC Journal,Thimble Literary Magazine, The Tiger Moth Review, The Alipore Post and elsewhere. He has a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. He lives in Kolkata, India.
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