Amaltas

Last night, while reading out a Gaelic verse to me,

She said she’d wanted to see a golden shower tree!

We discussed how long it had been since we were out last time,

Perhaps even longer since we saw those familiar gates, those corridors,

Those long walks across the stream seem even distant.

She told me she was longing to see the golden shower tree

For it is this season when they are in full bloom.

She asked me if I knew its other name, Indian laburnum?

And told its botanical name, Cassia fistula.

I imagined the gleam in her eyes, hearing her describe its colour, its aroma and its appearance.

I kept wondering silently, what had held her fancies to this common Indian flowering tree.

She went to describe, at times poetically, at times with her usual vigour, the nuances that wrap that flower,

She said the flowers disintegrate upon touch,

And, asked if I had ever experienced it myself.

But all I could recall were those long green beanstalks that grow on the tree

After the petals have fallen out.

I kept hearing her silently, not wishing to disrupt her golden palette as she kept painting along her words over the call.

She described how the flowers fall off the tree 

And cover the grass underneath, so much so, that the ground looks like an abstract painting 

Only specs of green of the grass peeing through the golden.

I kept struggling to imagine her lustrous carpet, but all I could recall were the concrete roads at the turn of my house,

Perhaps the only golden shower tree I could recollect having seen nearby.

She reminded me of the three trees that stand across our library entrance

That I had passed several times, unnoticeably.

I affirmed to her of their presence, perhaps lying about my own memory.

She went on to describe the tree in minutest details, but I somehow kept trying to recall the number I had just affirmed

She excitedly repeated to me, “Amrita, I’d soon go out to see the golden shower tree!”

I humorously pointed out, “Roopam, do you really think it would have changed since you saw them last?”

And we ended the call with a laugh!

*Amaltas– a common, flowering tree known as the Golden Shower tree that grows in the tropical South Asia.

This poem was co-authored by Roopam Mishra & Amrita Sharma.

Amrita Sharma is a Lucknow based writer currently pursuing her PhD in English from the
The University of Lucknow. Her works have previously been published in Setu Bilingual, Earth Fire
Water Wind: Anthology of Poems, The Quiver Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Café
Dissensus every day, AWS E-zine, Literary Yard, Trouvaille Review, Confluence: South Asian
Perspectives, Women’s Web, Borderless Journal, Tell Me Your Story, Muse India, Rhetorica
Quarterly, GNOSIS, Dialogue, The Criterion, Episteme and Ashvamegh. Her area of research
includes avant-garde poetics and innovative writings in the cyberspace.

Roopam Mishra lives in Lucknow, India. She is a Research Scholar at the Department of
English & Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow. She writes in Hindi, and in
English since the age of thirteen. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in an anthology.
Earth Fire Water Wind: Anthology of Poems, and in magazines and journals like Confluence
Magazine, Setu, Aspiring Writers’ Society e-zine, Rusty Truck, Café Dissensus, Literary Yard,
Borderless Journal, Hastaksher, Sahityiki, Rhetorica Quarterly, etc.