all day and all night,
tucked between the trees,
camping out under the stars,
braving the monsoons,
they wait
for the crows,
and brilliant parrots
to fly overhead
and attempt to settle
into the trees.
then, not even rising
from their elegant squats,
they yell a rough caw
back at the cheeky birds,
or, if the mood strikes,
set off a small explosive
whose sharp crack is enough
to make you jump out of your skin.
young and old, seasoned and new,
they wag fingers and
shake heads to say,
don't take these,
despite fumbled attempts
to communicate
that they had already fallen
from the heavy branches.
one cannot leave
the orchard with both
a mango
and a clear conscience.
Lovely, I felt like I was under a mango tree on a hot Indian evening with not much else to do. It reminds me of a George Barker poem "Street Ballad" where birds up above look down upon our messy affairs...but the joke is on them because they do not see the one hiding, observing them, from behind the barrel of a gun.
ReplyDeleteAustin
Hannah, I love this.
ReplyDeleteEspecially "not even rising / from their elegant squats" and "fumbled attempts / to communicate." Beautiful ways of putting things. It makes me smell and hear and feel the mango orchard.