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We saw every evening
And greeted each other
The jujube tree and me
In the middle of the desert
Where I took my evening strolls
Ours was a friendship
That needed no introduction
For we knew without knowing
We were in each other
From time immemorial
In creation endlessly eternal
Yet never ever begun
Like the star and the sky
The moon and the rabbit on her lap
She grew on barren land
Perhaps from a vagrant bird drop
Giving existence
Luxuriant expression
In her ever-verdant radiance
When the desert decides to smile
Aren’t tropical paradises often shamed?
Her foliage had all the green
And shine nature could ever glean
Children wandering the desert
Ravaged her leaves
For the gems she bore
In magnanimous abundance
At the close of winter months
Yet she never complained
She watched them play
In her secure shade
Like a mother in snooze
Half alert and half dazed
While the afternoons slothfully aged
Birds thronged her branches
Made nests and brooded
Imparting warmth to their eggs
In wintry nights
Looking at the stars
Their little heads filled
With the mirth of moonlit nights
Alas! I didn’t find her in her place
This evening with a beaming smile
What all that remained
Was an upturned stump
A clump of broken roots
That called out in vain
To a sinking evening sun
Like the raised hands of the dead
In a massacre scene
She has been felled
And unceremoniously carted
Away to give way
To a prestigious monument
To be made of concrete
Glazed tiles and marble
That would commemorate
An achievement
In preserving environment
A pain grips my heart
Like an angina in rage
As I sink on my knees
To touch those dying hands
Of my departed mate
Distressed like the birds
Homeless and wailing
Brittle eggs crushed
Embryos whimpering in sunshine
I raise my eyes
Tearfully refracted
To an elusive horizon
Blurred and distant
Saintly impersonal
As the summer wind whispers
The tree and you are destined
To meet again and again
In an unending sojourn
To share your tears and pain
And perish in vain
Periodically vandalized
By space and time
What it matters if a mate
Is missed for a while
When she is inseparable
And eternally in you –
The jujube tree and you.
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