The Green Tree

(The corridor, the corner and the tree are all a part of the school we are leaving this year...it is homage to the times left behind and a welcome to a new beginning).

                                                
The branches were bare

The leaves had long blown down

It was sere, dead, that tree

That once green tree at the corner of the corridor

Ravages of time ah!

All the laughter and rhyme,

It had veiled them all, that tree.

Ecstasy, reverberations of joy

Pandemonium created

On that yellow flooded corridor

Near the once green tree at the corner of the corridor

Transparencies of emotions now

Retaliation of memories

Free from that chaperon bare.

Separation and melancholy

Autumn, winter and agony...

Age has brought us far from that corner,

And the once green tree at that corner....

 Tears well up, you look down

Your steps recede to the exit

And the trodden leaves stick to your feet

They hinder your walk

Despondency strikes,

Will that ever bloom again?

The once green tree at that corner?

....you come back to see

You run through the beaten grounds

Slide through the soaked ways

Climb the petty steps

Wind of reminiscences

Voices haunt, they whisper

Our once green tree at the corner of that corridor...

You reach the place

Panting, out of breath...

And then exhilaration fills!

Foliage new born!

The same sweet...sweet smell,

Charioting feelings so pristine

Amidst a green tree at the corner of this corridor

You comprehend then, elated

It was waiting and will always do

For your head turned high

For your unchartered feet

For the spring... and for your smile

And so it has bloomed again

This green tree at the corner of this corridor

You look up...

Threshold of a new beginning

And see the golden light

On the evergreen tree at the corner of that corridor...

Just a little bit more...

I was swimming hard…four laps; I had to complete at least a respectable three. Yes they told you to “never leave the race in between”, but here I wasn’t even willing to participate. The coach stood on the other side. At end of the middle I found an unknown surge of energy ...I knew then I could actually finish it…but it was pre-conceived and so decided…how do you change that at the brink of competition when your mind goes numb? The coach helped me out and my other competitors went on to finish the swim. So what that my house chose me so that they wouldn’t be disqualified, knowing well enough that I wasn’t a distant swimmer! They still congratulated me for saving us from humiliation…but he that pulled me out said “you could have completed it, it was just a little bit more!”

         
Life thrusts upon us a multitude of such circumstances like the last lap, or the final step, or just another try…just a little bit more…an atom can create a universe, and that little can change it. Every trial and tribulation has that darkest hour…survivors are those that can walk through that hour alive…just another mile.

The last notes of any masterpiece of music, ends with a flourish that can capture a listener’s soul in the moment, and make the artiste work worthwhile. An unexpected end of O. Henry or a heroic Shakespearean end has never been less than applauded, loved and made legendary. Dancers are known to have created cyclones before leaving the stage. What is more, Einstein invention managed to blow up two cities before bidding adieu, horrendous but large.  The end must be worth reminiscing, it has to justify the decision of “to do, or not to do.” Or at least, the journey of “doing” must be finished, for the exhausted sinew to deliver to the mind and heart enough power, to embark on a new one. Life needs that little bit more, to make death a reality. An incomplete something in a painting, that “not full” heart in ecstatic moments, like looking at the palate when the stomach still feels needy, the definition of “near perfect” then becomes “just a little bit more.”

Winning was never a compulsion, and extravagant geniuses are not found in every nook and cranny of a creative being. But just the fact of knowing that spring is never far behind has always given the being to survive in the barren cold land for a few more days. Besides when was that night that didn’t give the fighter a little of its own strength, depth, patience, hope and experience of the self, then inviting him to a better, brighter morning? Perhaps a small compensation of all that it took…

Ever realized? A small period has more power than a page full of sentences hiding wisdom of all ages. It imparts the readers a license to think, reflect, question, accept or reject and then move forward. It vindicates the existence of those words…

My experience says that the worst relationships with people are those which do not end properly. A gnawing regret about something left unsaid…or even unheard. Or that last try, that could have mended the broken pieces into some shape, any shape that has a name.  A general notion in people usually gives a “goodbye” quite a negative light. For me, it’s a promise. I may not see you again, but I know what you mean to me, how you belong to me. A goodbye cannot erase the exuberance of days and years spent together, it just gives those moments the designation of “memories”.

   

The full stop, the goodbye, and the death: they are grand. But then they are just random manifestations of the end of the parable of an ant trying and trying again, to climb the wall…till it actually did. They are all that follow the “little bit more.” That is why maybe a forbidden last piece of a little more cake tastes so mysteriously sweet! Only the universe here has an uncanny power of infinity, to expand a bit more every passing second, perhaps to make space for each one of us, so that we never give up before the end and travel a little bit farther to our secret destinies…