A name is not a knowing You have to hug a tree Feel its bark, the texture of its leaves To understand how it invents tiny capsules of desire and puts them into seeds with just enough wisdom not too much Enough to know that the outside is the new inside That everything that grows is life that spaces are expanding that too much of life is but a death – A choking point for a new beginning and that all beginnings are old, old, old.
My sister is now mostly smoke and some ashes A few tiny bones on a river bed She has put the sky below me and the earth above On the knoll from where I can see: that peacock, Mandira. the pink flower bushes, Mandira. the hidden partridges, Mandira. the pipit songs, Mandira. A name is not a knowing You have to hug a tree.