A Whistle Across the Burning Sky

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In the deep hush of the Western Ghats’ green shade,

where moss slowly claims the ancient breathing stone,

I rest upon a rain-dark branch of silver Chembakam,

a flicker of flame in the cathedral of leaves.

*

Monsoon mist curls through the tangled forest air,

the scent of wet earth rising deep from the soil.

Pepper vines spiral on the patient trunks of trees,

untroubled by the restless reach of human hands.

*

Below, a shy stream slips through shadowed roots and fern,

moving toward seas it has never dreamed to see.

I guard the quiet heart of emerald forest shade,

where ancient rains whisper in endless green halls.

*

No flag is stitched upon my crimson forest breast,

no passport marks the paths my wandering wings take.

I move through skies where borders never learned to live,

where sun belongs to ant and pine alike.

*

Yet the wind brings a taste I never asked to know,

the iron-cold breath of a wounded human night.

Beyond these hills, past the Sahyadri’s old spine,

I hear the hollow language born of war.

*

Sirens tear open the fragile cloth of sleep,

promises fall while silent widows weep.

Smoke climbs higher than the circling eagles dare,

darkening the prayer halls of the open sky.

*

Across dry sands where ancient rivers once ran free,

red missiles bloom in gardens planted by men.

Between Israel and Iran the sky burns bright,

a fevered crimson staining earth and breath.

*

From this wet branch where quiet monsoon raindrops fall

I ask the question forests whisper to wind:

which ancient tree first taught the human heart to hate?

What river asked you build such walls?

*

Does jasmine choose the air it offers scent to?

Does monsoon rain demand a prayer or creed?

The drongo, myna, barbet, and trogon share the sky,

their wings unburdened by the names of gods.

*

Yet you divide the dust to mine and thine,

turning clear rivers slowly red with war.

You build bright dreamlands forged from steel and glass

while the living earth watches in silence.

*

How many forests must grow thick with graves

before your kings and slaves remember breath?

For every lung still borrows the same thin air,

and every life dissolves in equal dust.

*

How many songs must vanish into gunfire

before the silence frightens human hearts?

From dripping leaves of Malabar forests

I send a whistle fragile as new light.

*

A silver thread that climbs through smoke and years,

crossing oceans, ruins, cities filled with grief.

It slips through iron storms and restless skies,

carrying a memory older than war.

*

Perhaps one child among the ash and noise

will hear the thin music drifting through the dark

and remember what the patient rivers know:

that borders are shadows that fade in time.

*

The sky was never meant to burn with fire,

nor tangled in the thorn of barbed wire dreams.

Still my whistle rises softly through the storm,

a stubborn spark breathing hope.

*

It dares to dream the fevered earth may heal,

that wars will fade like mist above the Ghats.

And one day humankind will wake at last

as forests wake beneath returning rain