silence plucked peace from the night

like a tennis ball thud, a measured wind

played a belated volley on jaded turf.

a century ago, father told me there was

an old man who had the habit of telling

stories to trees and shrubs (ran a rosary),

but why should he converse with trees

as a child? the question chased me like

an apparition disguised in language;

wrinkled plosives emitted from Dad’s lips

masticated details, we cuddled vacant

when the old oak made noises, we faked

the man talking to us. what if he had left

behind his army of dwarfs flecking trunks,

poetically bearable, we added—warm quilts, 

only the yellow bulb flickered, an excuse 

of prowess pretending to sleep.

Rizwan Akhtar is a writer from Lahore, Pakistan. His debut collection of Poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines in the UK, the US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.