Inkling 2023 - Flipbook - Page 8
if leaves cou
by Sunaina Bal
Before first light, I see a sight;
A bird is swimming, in the silver-streaked sky.
Wings aflutter in sleepless flight;
I feel it feels like me tonight.
It swoops along the fading moon,
It turns and soars to a lilting tune.
It’s finally unchained, in this dark wide sky,
It flees its nest, far from nigh.
“Flee,” they’d say, “whyever not fly?”
And I just know the bird would reply:
“It was a nest so hollow, a haven of sorrows;
A cage in disguise, a facade so cleverly devised.
A festering land where no living thing sings,
I’d wish for wishes from the stars in the sky.
When I finally opened these lifeless wings,
Fleeing, flying, soaring,
They all became mingled things.”
A tear slips down its angled beak,
But none will see except for me.
I wish to know where it’ll go next.
“I hardly know myself,” it says.
By dawn it reaches a tall oak tree,
Zooming past it, a leaf comes free.
The leaf is mum as it slowly falls,
But the bird far away can sense its desperate calls.
If leaves could speak, they would rather so;
Lament on their lives, a life so alone.
Born in spring’s dew in the high heights of May,
Only to wrinkle in death,
INKLING 2023 | 8
