Homing Pigeons
Soon they will come in
The homing pigeons
Circling overhead before alighting
Clapping wings
Into dark-hole coops
A wobbly walk
After a minute they will disappear
As the sky gets heavier and the lights come on
Soon there will be a sizzling pan
Scraped off non-stick coat
Double-egg omelettes and sugared toast
The heat will thicken
The blouse moist, stuck fast to skin
Jagged egg-shells in open bin
Nauseating
I wonder what they do
These pigeons inside their coop
Make omelettes perhaps?
While I wish I had wings that clapped
Even for a day.
Homeless
They cut down three more trees yesterday
Not even the searing heat could stop them
First they lopped off the rickety branches
Then sawed through the trunks
Two of the trees didn’t feel anything
They were dead already
Bone-white, leafless, hideous even in the daytime
Poisoned to make way for a new thoroughfare
Or how could one accommodate the
increasing number of cars?
There were two sturdy siris trees
The third was a gulmohar the shape
of a woman dancing
It was not dead yet
It clung on to life as its branches clung
onto a few leaves
And the crow clung to its nest in hope
At least this tree was not dead
But it was no excuse
When they severed the trunk yesterday
And left it for the yellow truck
Today as the gulmohar trundles away
The lone crow sits atop still in hope.
