In my scruples, I have not the conundrum of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree: A poem 

I have no paint on my face, though I’ve been clowning 

and acrobatting in a cirque de soleil, where even the  

Sun has little to cheer about! And the audience is perpetually 

dismayed, yet keen observers. I am sitting on the crotch of a fig tree 

that is asking for me to shake it down, so that all the fruit come 

raining down on me! And there are so many of them, all purple in their prime! 

As pretty to look at as they might taste. But my hunger doesn’t draw me  

out to do the much expected needful. The entire garden of the world  

wants me to take the pickings. And let there be celebration! But 

I don’t feel in festive mood. I am Lancelot who doesn’t want to paint  

the landscape in rainbows. The wounds on my soul are a reminder that being priceless  

is greater than all possessions! I am just happy to feel alone in my scruples. 

You may all think evil is the key to redemption! The devil is not what you 

make him out to be! It is not the devil but the Wishmaster who has drawn up your illusions.  

I would have you believe that I have declined all the pommes and the  

pommegranates before too. And not just in this lifetime! 

Would you imagine that if I had to make a wish between one and the other, 

I’d really have none of either! And none of it all, too, if the Wishmaster would conjure that for me! 

Sylvia Plath, like you, I love all I cherish. But I don’t think it is a conundrum to be decidedly 

and avowedly empty-handed. You know the ones that reside in my heart and soul, are just as they 

would be – reposed there in their absence. If you truly love, you can also live without the 

love being corporeally present in your environment. Because there is a reverberating 

echo of love humming from the distant mountaintops, even in the awesome silence between them!