Where It Bends Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

Where it bends
there is no kneeling.

The wind lays a hand against it
and it alters—
not in obedience
but in answer.

Grain remembers.
Each season presses its thumb
into the cambium.
Nothing is wasted.

I have stood there long enough
to see that height
is a quiet accumulation—
a patience with sky.

Once, I tried to tell you
about this tree.
You were looking elsewhere.

Now it has outgrown
the frame of your inattention.

There is a dignity
that does not announce itself—
only continues.

We, on the other hand,
practice our expansions,
call our contortions growth,
mistake noise for ascent.

The tree does not correct us.

It stands
in its slow thinking,
its inward weather,
its unborrowed light.

And keeps rising.