Poem

  ON KILLING A TREE
- Gieve Patel

It takes much time to kill a tree,

Not a simple jab of the knife 

Will do it. It has grown 

Slowly consuming the earth,

Explanation 

            In the first stanza, the poet says that a simple cut does not destroy a tree; it takes a long time to kill it. A sudden rough blow of the knife will do nothing to the tree because it has grown up strong by consuming the earth slowly.