Tree-ness

These are troubled times, warring times. Particularly so, for some who work in the profession of Florence Nightingale. That too, in far away lands, attracted by the remunerations offered in a country, where oil and money are more important than education.

 Forty six Indian nurses, primarily from Gods Own Country, as the Indian State of Kerala is often referred to, working in Iraq and sending home their earnings to educate their families; caught in the militant crossfire, bundled by them into buses,and taken from place to place. Massive efforts to trace and free them through talks, and they arrive home after facing buses, bombs and uncertainty.

A salute to the enterprising, dedicated nurses...

In God's Own country,
some trees
must step out
of the Silent Valley.

It isn't easy
being a Tree.

A testing of the soil
and the waters,
a rooting
and imbibing
as she slowly learns to be a Tree;
where others rest,
where some temporarily nest,
while she
slogs to distribute
the riches of the Earth
to all her branches and leaves
and even some hanger-ons.

There are chain-saw times,
woodcutting days,
and she goes bravely
into the future,
away from her land
flying on wheels,
leaving behind a bereft ,
confused but healthy stump

Different lands, different people,
desert sands, demanding mountains,
but she has learned to root;
She conserves the water,
rejoices in the leaves,
and realizes,
that growing means facing
more unpredictable winds.

Some winds are quiet,
some scrape by,
and some attack,
as she stands firm
amidst many others like her,
there to work the soil,
enriching it
along with herself.

Her fruits,
quietly reaching back home,
as she faces once again
another weird season
another mercenary
darkly dangerous howling wind.

She has made her mark,
with her quiet caring,
in a country
of another God
where history is crushed,
ambitions fed unbridled,
truths hidden,
houses razed,
man kills man,
women must hide
and children play with guns.

She returns home
sometimes
in the eye of her mind,
to help
the old tree stump
grow,
to harbor nests
and places of rest
once again.

There is No Empty Nest Syndrome
as she flies way again
to ensure
that nothing is empty again.

Yes, it isn't easy
being a Tree.