Midnight in Majuro
You may exhort
the inexorable sea
to resculpt the coral,
to resuscitate
the drowning breadfruit,
to restore the shoreline,
to recede
the plundering
Pacific
gathers coconuts
taro
mangroves
roads
and children
submerging
a culture,
salinating a language
awash with mosquitoes.
The salted puncture
of feverish nostalgia
for limestone plateaus
that surf the sunrise.
for a friend who lives on Majuro amidst the vast and encroaching Pacific
Khareef
In a tri-sidereal span
the thirsty Boswellia
are nursed by the engorged winds of Gujarat.
Sand is shodden
in marsh-rosemary slippers
and adorned with shawls of sea-lavender.
Rosettes of the Dhofarian jaguar
spotted prowling the bewildered camel
in the low and sated fog.
Its hooves steeped in the sweet mud of Darjeeling.
Inspired by the monsoons of Oman and the beauty of Salalah
The concrete didn’t move
but the rose did.
Implacable and resolute.
Subversive and surviving.
Water resting in the fissures.
Dust and sunbeams mingling.
One stem, one blossom
unfolding
above the firmament.
written in response to Tupac Shakur's "The Rose that Grew from Concrete" at a Bread Loaf School of English BLTN workshop