A Poem of Memory, Bloom, and Becoming
(This poem was born of a sudden moment of recognition—when a flowering Lagerstroemia, seen in the quiet backyard of a foreign land, evoked the soft fragrance of home. Known for its delicate, crinkled petals and luminous hues, the tree stirred not sorrow but a sweet recollection—of India, of gentle seasons past, and of a timeless continuity that binds us across lands and years. What follows is a tribute to that bloom, and to the quiet ways in which beauty returns, rekindles, and reminds.)
Lagerstroemia—name of silken sound,
A whisper from home, on foreign ground.
She blooms not just from branch and bark,
But from memory's light in the heart’s deep dark.
You bring the breath of my native land,
Stirring sweet strings with a memory’s hand.
Your sight replays a gentler time,
Of sunlit hours and childhood rhyme.
In the quiet backyard of a borrowed land,
You rise—graceful, generous, grand.
A queen without crown, yet sovereign still,
Clad in coral-pink, on a breeze-kissed hill.
How strangely sweet this sudden sight,
As if time bent down in the morning light.
The petals—delicate, wrinkled, wise—
Fall like dreams from a sleepless sky.
O flower of twilight, soft as sigh,
What makes you bloom, then bid goodbye?
And yet in each fading, I see the start—
A pulse of return, a steadfast heart.
No dirge shall be sung for a bloom so rare,
For even decay is perfumed air.
Each fall is a promise, each leaf a sign—
That beauty reborns, beyond decline.
In your fleeting life, a truth you show:
All that is lovely must learn to go.
But in going, it leaves behind its flame—
A light, a longing, a sacred name.
So bloom, Lagerstroemia, in my soul’s deep recline,
A relic of India, a blossom so fine.
Not just a tree, but a tale retold—
Of loss and wonder, of new and old.
scribo ad LX 