The Oak Tree Speaks

Do you know how many ways there are to die in this city?

1. Speeding taxicab.

2. Open manhole cover.

3. The man breathing so heavy at the bus stop.

When I was a teenager, the boy I loved would pay a homeless

guy ten bucks to buy him the cheapest bottle in the liquor store. 

My love sucked the glass ‘til his teeth were marbles. Rolled

himself down the subway stairs, hopped into the tracks. Waited.

4. Jealous wife.

5. Brooklyn Bridge.

6. Fire escape.

Only once, he let it get so close I screamed. I had never made

that kind of sound before. He turned, his face a prayer wheel

atop his neck, a smile so foreign I could not speak its language.

Like water running in reverse, he spilled himself up to safety.

When the train hurricaned past, the fist of air rattled my branches.

7. Rooftops, all of them.

8. The barroom brawl.

9. The West Side Highway.

10. The wrong street corner.

In New York, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that

it was cut down in its prime. Nobody counts the rings,

notifies the loved ones. There are other trees.

We can always squeeze in one more. Mind the tourists.

It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t wanna live there.

11. Disgruntled coworker.

12. Central Park after dark.

13.  Backpack through the metal detector.

14.  

15.  

16.  

For years, we wouldn’t watch movies where they destroyed

New York. The aliens never take Kansas, we joked. They go straight

for the heart. Poor Kansas. All corn fields and skyworks. All apple

pie.  Nobody to notice if it’s missing. Just all that open space to grow

in.

Sarah Kay

I read this poem, first, on a torn piece of newspaper which was used to wrap flowers. The title had been torn off! So, my introduction was “Do you know how many ways there are to die in this city?” I read on thinking it was a statistical analysis of causes of death.

As I read through it, I realized it was far from that, intrigued I googled it and found this wonderful young poet. Having studied the classical and the neo classics during my college days, I had long since stopped being excited about modern poetry. I felt that the modern poet was turning into an exhibitionist. (The world now was fawning on the loud and show stopper kind of literature) the soul was missing! It did not make me sit up and want to know more.

I was actually introduced to Sarah by my daughter’s enthusiasm for her poems. I first heard her on You Tube and literally sat up to listen to her. But this was not a poem I had heard before.

The personification of the oak tree is what strikes you through the poem. The poem first talks of this boy “she loved” (the poet or the oak tree?) as the number of causes of death continues we are exposed to this boy who is trying to get himself killed, or is he just a tease? The calmness (his face a prayer wheel atop his neck) tells us, he is tempting fate.

I did not start writing this to give a critical analysis of this poem by a great young poet! What I am trying to say that poetry is not dead; it is not limited to the rap lyrics sung by wannabies. What I love about this poet is how she breathes life into her narrative rhythms. I love reading poetry aloud and I do so when I am alone at home. The harmony and peace that it gets me cannot be got by reading the motivational speeches that the market abounds in.

The starkness of her words, bereft of even a semblance of ornament, catches your gut; wrings it to dryness and then lets the phrases explode in your brain with multi-dimensional layers of meanings. The pleasure that it imparts to my parched soul is like water on the desert sand – it is never enough but it continually quenches the inner being.

I bring before you a poem I wrote when I was very young maybe eighteen or so. I wonder now what made me think of such things? Was it the adolescent mind with its chemical battles that make you look at things so deeply? Or is it just a tentative foray into the beautiful world of words and rhythm? Whatever it is, it gives you an insight into not only the poet’s mind but the universal truth that it encompasses. I wish we could go back to the times when reading poetry was a part and parcel of every get together not the incessant playing of Antakshari ( A game where Hindi film songs are sung beginning with the last sound of the song sung before) Poetry which touches your core with the least words and the strongest implications.

Destination

Dull throbbing of muted silence,

Opened up

Myriad options…

The mind took off on a flight to,

Unknown destination.

Multiple possibilities…

Body tittered, laughing anticipation,

Closed and shut

Various limits…

Omnipotent soul hesitated on the brink

Longing, desiring.

So many cycles to go…

Before the ultimate END.

Benita Patnaik