Mottakeenur Rehman

Arbor Mundi (The World Tree)

I. The Invitation

What alchemy pulls root to sky—
this slow green fire, this patient cry?
Where wanderers carve their transient lines,
you drape the dust in living signs:
petals like unfinished prayers,
while we, the breathless, clutch at air.

Your branches weave a vaulted tongue—
a lexicon where storms are sung.
Here, the wind translates every loss
to dialect of moss and frost.

II. The Covenant

From lung to leaf, from leaf to lung,
the oldest trade stays unstrung.
You take our bankrupt carbon sighs,
return them gilded by your skies.

Why scrape for truth in printed tombs
when your rings bloom their quiet wisdoms?
Each groove contains what scholars miss—
the moon’s pale grammar, time’s cursive kiss.

III. The Revelation

For whom do you dye twilight’s shroud?
For whom do roots knead dark to bread?
Not for angels, but the bowed—
beetles who read by phosphor tread,
who know all light is lent, not owned,
a debt called in by leaf and bone.

O silent archivist, you keep
earth’s logarithmic secrets deep:
how shadows mint their copper hue,
how death gets young before it’s through.

I press my spine against your spine
and feel the turning world align.