Lockdown Garden

Close to each other,

socially undistanced,

the mulberry leaves,

uniformly green,

shall turn brown together.

It’s like a herd dying.

2

Firm to begin with,

the mud clod

could’ve injured you.

It crumbles in your hand.

3

In the heap of  dead

leaves crinkly as

brown skins, those

breathing things

foraging around

the bamboo stand

are  jungle babblers.

4

It was planted

all wrong, too

close to a wall,

under the mango

trees. There was

nowhere for it

to go except up

like a mast and

that’s where

it went, taking

its leaves with it—

long, tapering.

I never saw them

fall. It never

flowered, which

would’ve helped

me look it up in a

book of  flowering

Indian trees. Now

I’ll never know

its name nor of

the bird singing

at evening

in the shrubbery.

5

She stood outside

the gate, a woman

my age, head covered

with flowery print,

a sickle in her hand.

Could she come

inside and cut

grass for her goats?

It was ankle high.

Her face was inches

from mine and I felt

her breath on my skin.

It’s after I’d turned

the corner that I heard

what she’d said.

6

The shingles unwalked on,

the doors bolted,

the squirrels back in their nests.

Under the moon a bird floats

and settles on a branch.

The sky is pale.

The leaves of the ironwood

when new every spring

are a deep pink.

The evening  goes out like a flame.

We’ve seen different things.

It’s always been so.

Tell me, love, what you saw today.