if a tree could be called a forest, my mother has a garden
beneath the back wall -
                                                 bhindi in a grow-bag, tomato in a pot.

watered by the overflowing tank sometimes, & sometimes
by rain,
when the little things make it more than just a noise outside
the window - the whole family pausing, each from their own,
independently discovering a strange island -

                                                  is it raining, mother asks.

                                                 it is raining, father answers.

                                                 it is lightning, sister says, & will thunder.

little things -

                           like frogs climbing the wall next to the garden,
& bathroom doors swelling up in an available desire
of ajarness, a voluntary retirement.             on sunnier days -

mother complains that the bhindis are too soft,
don't get all they want from true earth, & tomatoes
have to be picked orange, because it doesn't rhyme,
& squirrels bite into ripe red ones like a boast.

true earth -

                         I imagine trees talking in lava under crust,
getting all they want, not in sounds but in light or in things
between light & sound, like a thought, a smoke, a stuck-out tongue,
a secret.

I imagine trees doing hushed paperwork & then wash my face -
like a long song, or a short one sang slowly - with a soap
in the shape of things -

                                                 a rose, the pyramids, a pokémon, the moon.

& at the midnight tick-tock of the clock I'm a brick more,
not of a wall but of something so expansive that it is, becomes,
the very opposite of a wall, something which can encapsulate
my mother's garden in all its glory & all its wants -

                                                     magnesium   nitrogen   potassium

                                      white   mud   love

                         sun   moon   sky

brown   wind   solitude.

~Ajay
7/12/19