A Tree

A standing tree is growing bigger each day for me. I do not know where it is but I know it is there, all for me. Poets may have driven beauty from it. People may have taken shade from it. People may have drunk the water from its source and it may have prevented calamities of flood from monsoon rain. I have not seen how it looks like and I may never see it in my time. I do not know if it worries about me at all but I am concerned about it. I am concerned if people do not cut it and carpenters turn to chairs for different bums to sit. I am concerned constructor does not chop it off and turn to scaffolding for his workers to work on it. I am concerned wood cutter does not think to warm his home. I have prayed it does not mould to any kind of woodworks for it belongs to me.

I am eighty years old and I am a sick-abed for many years. As I realize I am on the wooden bed I cannot think I have deprived one man's tree. I hear the tapping sound of the feet against the timber floor as my children walk towards me. They come to tell me I can go for pilgrimage to another town but I cannot travel from the diminishing calcified substance in my bones. I have grown old and I am worried of me. With age I have been thinking of death and more than death I fear of not facing my tree. The thoughts of what if I die in another town and what if they do not find my body have been persuading me much. When end comes nearer I feel a closer acquaintance with my tree. One day when I close my eyes my tree will burn the flame and bring me to earth.

A tree is growing bigger each day for me,

I do not know where it is-

But I know it is there, all for me.