A gentle hug

The midday sun
pours lava.

The tree
with its baby-arms
embraces
the immigrant,

a few feet away
from
the bald
bus stand,

enjoying the cool
wind
and the green circle
on that piece of asphalt.

-Sunil Sharma

On the beauty of poplars

Without the poplar trees there’d be no song,
no fluting call of orioles, no wild
and wanton dancing by the stream, no wreaths
of black and yellow through the leafy green.

Without the poplar trees, how would we know
the wind was pouring, rolling from the west?
The oaks stand firm, immobile, poplars sigh,
their topmost branches trembling silver sea.

And when the trembling grows, a rising tide
of waving boughs and hissing with the foam
of unseen water-wind, cold ocean-born,
the poplars raise their slender boughs to show

the wind take form, we see it in the sky,
an ocean, weed-strewn, flotsam flying by.

-Jane Dougherty

We grow as

Nature ordains
never complain and bear the pains
from black to grey, green to brown
one by one we fall to the ground
Our duty done with full obedience
spreading freshness and fragrance
with peaceful quietude we surrender
making space for others in elegance.
This is The Truth This is The Call
This is The Providence of The Fall
Be it Oak, Pine Fir or Kowhai
Sown ‘n Grown, This is The Final Cry’.

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Bios And Links

-Sunil Sharma

Toronto-based author-academic-editor, Sunil Sharma has published 23 creative and critical books— joint and solo.

He edits the Setu journal: https://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html

For details, please visit the website: https://sunil-sharma.com