Once a part of (a/the) tree integral
made to feel as if the life of the tree
depends/ depended on it
Taking in the rains, the sunshine
and the climes many without wear or withering
Yet lying unnoticed when dried
and detached from the bough
It/ The leaf thought was its home (for life)
A leaf without a face or a fate
one among the countless
As much a part of a tree
as is a wave distinct from sea
For that moment brief when it dreams to rise
above it/ its identities defining
and comforting conformities
Coming down crashing to become nameless
In the vastness
Of the soil or the sea
To rise in the spring anew, or to become part of cloud to rain down upon earth
To become the blossoming
that bears no semblance
to the leaf fallen or the wave that could not be/ create waves
In the death/ annihilation of what made it It/ a leaf or a wave
The leaf and the wave fell and rose
to unbecome their limits/ limiting fates/ defined destinies
Bound together in purpose
A vast blankness spread across seams
Waiting to become a scheme, a drawing, a design or a dream
Or simply a poem scrawled in abandon
all over it/ its face/ being
Shapes, sizes, fates and fortunes varying
Drawn, scribed or at times just torn and crumpled
cast away to a bin or a heap
being called trash for no fault of it
Becoming a paper-plain or a boat floating in a puddle
riding with the frolic of a child beaming
A page can be what it is made to be
From (empty/ formless/ shapeless) blankness sans shape
To an epic/ or opus life-turning/ life-transforming
or just lay crumpled at the bottom of a bin
From deciding destinies of the few
To itself remaining fateless among/ in the crowd of the pages bound tight by the identity of a book
it is trying to be/ it is making
(Becoming) a part of a book's being/ life
Riding high up in the welkin
Hovering hasteless over the hills at times
Peaks and fauna under its feet
Distant dots teeming the void between/ amid horizons
Taking in the tides
Scaling the skies
Giving the wings the power to glide or/ & glee
A feather defining the flocks of birds many
Tethered to identities,
Colour, cast, shape of the nose or the names of deity/ deities
Some borrowed, some worn out of choice or lack of it
Taking-in the comfort of conformity
A faceless, fateless, nameless nonbeing
One among the crowd/ mob of many
A human that could not be
A becoming lost unto conforming
Weighed down by the half-hearted/ heedless trying
Encumbered all life by the fear
Of becoming/ being anything less
(And) ending up being/ becoming not a trifle more/ nothing more
than what the compulsive/ unconscious conforming/ conformity chose for it
A leaf, a page, a feather or a human
Taken away and out of the context defining it
Be it a bough, a book, a bird or a being
Is as much a serf tethered/ fettered to (its) fate
As a fish that dreams of/ As a fish dreaming of flying
Unaware/ bound down/ weighed down/ trampled down by the pain
Of (being smothered/) smothering in open air and waters of abandon
Distanced/ distinct from definitions any/ any defining
Rid of all identities limiting
Staring/ seeing the fears in the face/ eyes
Giving up on the comforting/ comfy/ cosy/ convenient conformities/ conforming
(The convenience) of being faceless and fateless
a part of a bough, a book, a flock or a crowd
To nourish the spring
To scribe a story worth living
To fly above (one's) fears
(Or) to live unencumbered by death
breathing down one's neck each moment/ breath
Can be as much a fate as (it is) a (sheer/ mere) choice
To a leaf dried and fallen
A feather adorning a flight/ wing no more
A page that is as much complete (either) blank or filled or thrown heedless and crumpled/ crumpled heedless (at the bottom of a bin)
And a being waiting to be human
(Dreaming par/ past/ beyond itself)
Unwoeful of freedom
to be/ of what it can ( and cannot) be
Freedom that often wears the guise/ garb of fear
(and the garb/ guise of death), fettering/ tethering/ anchoring one down
to a bough (nameless), a book unscripted/ inscribed/ unread, a bird grounded/ fligtless or a being waiting to be defined
By the identities (and dreams) smeared upon it
(A song humming itself past refrain)
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