Tara Menon (India-USA)
The black locust trees appeared out of nowhere
in the conservation land bordering our property
and multiplied to tower over the greenery,
making it hard to plant anything in our soil.
Their roots extend across our lawn
and threaten the foundation of our house.
Our solar panels collect less light.
The bay window in my mother’s bedroom
that functioned as an observatory
is now dominated by branches and leaves
instead of the constellations—Columba, Orion, Corvus,
Crater, Hydra, Monoceros, Canis Major, Pyxis—
that poured their light into our binoculars or our stark eyes.
The green giants filtered out much of the view
of a partial solar eclipse.
Mercifully, they obscured much of the delicate pin-pricked canopy
only after my son cultivated a love for astronomy
as a star-gazing toddler who embraced the cosmos.
Sitting on the deck on a cane armchair,
I gaze at frequent trespassers—brown rabbits.
Undaunted by a bookworm turning her pages and staring at them,
the lagomorphs meet my gaze, then graze on the flowers
that thrive without the sun.
They nibbled out of existence the coreopsis plants my husband tended.
The wind shifts, cooling my face, scenting me
with a jasmine-like fragrance from white luscious flowers
clustered on high branches.
The petals tumble down, never-ending flakes in spring,
joyful confetti dotting the deck.
On my aunt’s property in Ernakulam, a jasmine tree
perfumed her house and scattered blossoms.
I didn’t think a similar fragrance, a similar shower,
would drift down to my house, guarded on the street side
by pine sentinels, in frigid Lexington.
If I had the right kind of string to weave a garland
I’d have plucked the clusters and, petal by petal, strung them
into a creamy necklace for my blue papier-mâché
Krishna statue, like I did decades ago for my Grandmother’s
idols when our fingers created loops to pin
jasmine buds into floral necklaces.
I used to flaunt the leftover pieces in my raven hair,
then thick and lustrous like the flowers.
The locust trees have tall thorns
and their clusters hang beyond my reach,
enticing honey bees,
allowing my fantasies of garlands to blossom.
Without the giants, the wind would drift different recollections,
the view would be different, none of the blossoms would fall on my hair.
Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her most recent poems have been published in Global South (forthcoming), Tipton Poetry Journal, Arlington Literary Journal, San Pedro River Review, and The Loch Raven Review. Her latest fiction has appeared in The Hong Kong Review, Litro, The Bookends Review, Rio Grande Review, and The Evening Street Review. She is also a book reviewer and essayist whose pieces have appeared in many journals.