Birds and the Tree – A Long Poem
I am a tree,
older than the paths your feet remember,
rooted in stories the soil still hums at night.
I was once a whisper of seed
cupped inside the brown palm of earth,
and today I hold a parliament of wings.
At dawn I wake before the sun,
because birds never wait for light—
they create it.
A koel stitches black silk into the sky,
sparrows rehearse the alphabet of survival,
and the bulbul clears its throat
like a priest of mornings.
They come to me tired,
with the dust of miles on their feathers,
with storms still dripping from their tails.
I do not ask where they have been—
trees are trained in hospitality,
not in interrogation.
Every branch of mine
is a handwritten letter to the wind,
and birds read them fluently.
A crow debates philosophy on my left arm,
a pigeon writes domestic peace treaties on my chest,
and somewhere near my crown
a tailorbird is stitching a green house
with the needle of its beak.
I feel their weight—
not as burden,
but as proof that gravity still believes in love.
At noon the sun becomes arrogant,
marching down my spine,
trying to edit my shadow out of the world.
That is when children arrive,
eyes like unbroken mirrors,
throwing pebbles at silence.
They do not see me;
they see only the birds,
and I am grateful—
a tree does not grow for applause.
The mynas hold a noisy conference,
arguing over crumbs and kingdoms,
while the parrot performs a magic trick—
turning human words into green laughter.
I store each syllable in my rings,
year after year,
until language becomes wood.
But evening is my favorite chapter.
The sky loosens its buttons,
and orange bleeds into blue
like a shy confession.
Birds return in tired commas,
pausing on my shoulders
before finishing their sentences at home.
One arrives with a broken wing,
fear shivering louder than pain.
I bend—
trees bend in ways humans never learn—
and I cradle the storm inside it.
Night after night I stand guard,
moon polishing my scars,
until flight grows back.
I have seen seasons
like faces in a long crowd:
Spring—
where every nest is a new prayer,
every leaf a syllable of hope.
Summer—
where thirst tests faith,
and I ration my shade
like a saint distributing miracles.
Monsoon—
when the sky falls in love with me,
kissing me in silver syllables,
and birds bathe like children
who have forgiven the world.
Autumn—
where letting go is not loss
but a softer kind of arrival.
Winter—
when silence is loud,
and birds become small,
but courage becomes huge.
Once, men came with machines.
Their eyes were made of profit,
their hands of impatience.
A woodpecker hammered warnings
into my ribs,
but no one speaks bird in boardrooms.
I watched my brothers fall—
forest after forest
becoming furniture for emptiness.
The birds scattered like broken alphabets,
their homes reduced to invoices.
That night
not a single song visited my branches.
I had never known
that loneliness could be louder than chainsaws.
So listen to me now,
you who read this with roofs over your heads:
When you save a tree,
you are not saving wood—
you are saving conversations,
you are saving directions to the sky,
you are saving the grammar of flight.
A world without trees
is a library where all books are burned,
and a world without birds
is a morning that forgot how to begin.
I stand still,
not because I am powerless,
but because faith needs roots.
And every time a bird lands on me,
the earth signs another treaty with heaven.
Contributed By: Ajay Gautam Advocate: Lawyer / Author / Columnist
