The Drum-Stick Tree by Murali Sivaramakrishnan

I do not know for how long
I stood in the fork of the drum-stick tree
Gazing long and hard at the school as it lay among the ruins of my long lost life

There was not one living soul
Only ghosts that floated about
Defying earth’s gravity

What does it mean to live together
As the teacher explained if not only to get her?
Come closer my friend, I do not eat strangers, hanging upside down

After all, you who do not know me
Might mistake me for the devil
All dark and purple living in sordid fire of hell

Watch as I extinguish the old school and its thatched sheds
Hanging on this fork of the old drum-stick tree
The miracle of being able to cast and create at will

Time and tide and past and future
Standing on the fork of the old near-dead drum-stick tree, with a wave of my hand,
A child and man at the same time. Not dead, apparently, yet.

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*The Vetala, a powerful but usually evil spirit is supposed to take rest hanging upside down on the branches of the drum-stick tree—old folk belief

End of the poem

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