Notes to Myself on Earth Day

There is much to learn
of the cruel mutations
of industrial swell
from the crow at the balcony
who has shown up everyday
for the last seven days
with a mini-aluminium rod
clenched in its bill.

There is much to learn
from moons that tirelessly
bleed gold on the landfilled lake.
And from how the forest dwells
in our city- exiled to the order
of scummiest effluvia, ranked best
invisible in the cracks between
buses and bureaucracy.

There is much to learn
from the peepal that grows
first in, then out the stone wall,
like a beautiful ghost.
Less to learn from fossils
of mythology, we may hail from:
Gods who plucked mountains
as if crumbs of cake, broke trees
with twiddling thumbs to caulk
the money-slaved vacuum of men.

There is much to learn
from things we wish not to learn.
Words we wish not to speak.
Bless the fifty-year-old mother goddess
who knows not the crowning glory
of the orgasm, someone please
tell her: the clitoris has a tongue.
She may conduct her own
one-woman coronation; it takes
one hand- I promise less effort than clapping.

Bless them for whom the birthing ended
right after things got born-
when the body finally alone, breathed.
Bless them who never felt duped by
or sold hard on the joy this life brings.
Never heard the wound of forests whimper
beneath the foundation of their homes.
How many times can blood be rinsed
off hands and adzes
before one erases the pigment of living?
Bless them who never once offered to carry
the burden of a spiralling earth,
like an executioner’s axe, on their necks.
Never felt the soft arms of a river
unfold from around the hips.

Bless them who have built walls
in their eyes, fortified them
with bricks and trellises. Oh bless
each windowless brain.