For I Too Must Leave Just Like Those Birds Poem by RIC BASTASA

the tree in the garden
has died

what we see now are
nothing but twigs without leaves

below are the heaps
of dead leaves
rotting

we have become like them
hopeless for sometime

dry and cracking
light as the wind
drifting like
the cloud

empty, hollowed by the
mourning of our arid
days

dragging nights
lifeless on a very cold wood
for a bed

one morning some yellow sparrows
with thin long black beaks
hover upon those twigs

and the dead tree even for
the moment has assumed
life

upon a borrowed hope only
for that brief moment

until then when all the sparrows
fly away again
taking with them all the songs
that you hear

you learn the tune from those
thin black and long beaks
and you must compose a song
for yourself

borrowing hope from hope
putting those leaves back
on your
imaginary trees


you must tell me
about the will to live

for i too must leave
and be a part of somewhere else