Fallen Short Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

In the morning on the BKC pavement
I see parijaat flowers, barely six feet down,
White stars knocked down with pink spears,
Having sweet-smell and yet dead to my nose.

Full many a flower is born to lie down
And be trampled by men and animals;
While some celebrate the flowers in poem
Or on hair, some admire their fetching fragrance.

“The perfume of virtue travels against the wind
And reaches unto the ends of the world”,
Says Gautam Buddha in Dhammapada:
The perfume of parijaat not even six feet!