The Broken Leaf

By Tanish Gupta

I am a broken leaf

Vainly recurring an effort 

To ride the winds that broke me,

The winds said as time.

Pulling against the mighty Earth

With a might that shames itself

The dirt rises through the air

The branch grows to sky

And so heads to meet the cloud,

The cloud as much ice and fluid,

As illusion

This parody of a world

Rains down with its prejudices

So brings with it trials too trivial to see

Too lifeless to survive

The path is sealed, the breeze stilled

What is below pulls,

What is above pushes

The time beside ages, the companion

Changed and unchanged

The crevices, cracks deep tell of stories

As many as vanity allows

My homely branch, lost in the past,

Yet close;

A grave in the soil closer,

Gravity too cruel for remembrance

The wind too cold for fear

Staring down the cloud confines and mocks,

For it is my sky, it is not

Through skies false

Sneaks past the brightest ray

As much of light as hope

Bringing visions of the sky,

As false as truth, as sparse as full

Lit in the moral immortal star of life

Awakens dreams of the good that is freedom

Growing in the birth and rebirth

Of infinite inspirations

Sans confine, sans rage, sans desperation

So do all calculi fail to deliver

Sinking in human ecstatic hope

One lone experiment

Overturning infinite others

These dreams asleep, these nightmares awake

Shall one day overturn.

By Tanish Gupta