Cover Story | 2021: New Year Double Issue: Poem

From “Lockdown Garden”

A poem

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra | 25 Dec, 2020

(Courtesy: Basile Morin, Wikimedia Commons)

The bark is smooth, flaky,
the trunk hollow;
midway, black-edged, is a hole
big enough to put your hand in
or the whole arm. From two
sides, branches come out, whipthin,
green-tipped. The tree
is otherwise bare. Too tall to be
a stump, the crepe myrtle
is preparing to flower.