Fighting with his ghosts,
intimate dirt,
disseminating pain
he was going home.

Finding a panic room
in pectorals, for numbness of toes,
lifting the door of burden
in dying vision,

his father comes in daylight
of old age, climbing the stairs
of bones, swaying
like an ash tree in frost.

One counts the annual rings of
old trunks, depicting
mighty happenings, black and white
green summers of choked life,

tasting one’s own decline, filling the
cups of rosemary, a child learns to speak
thatched words of wasted birth in
tune with younger years of grief.

Satish Verma