treesong
speechless
my love for trees renders me
near speechless
the pine the birch the
eucalypt
(whose scent
and piebald
shedding
bark
and silver
inner skin
makes me nearly
weep)
I know a woman who takes dictation from rocks
who spirals emerald energy into the earth
giving back
wherever she can
I know a woman
works in India
where
trees are planted
in the name of Goddess Shakti
in
my urban life
I
keyboard
commute
work
plant nothing
weekly
I water my
potted
weeping fig
and chant:
I love you
you are beautiful
thank you
I need to do
more
sunsong
when I arrived in ’75
the grim grey
slid by
as the taxi driver said:
‘sun is angry with this country’
in the scorcher of ’76
we stomped across the browning grass
in Hyde Park
(my Parisian boyfriend surprised that our
café fish
came coated
in bright orange breadcrumbs)
back to bright Australia for a bit
but made my way again
to the sun-shy Northern hemisphere
where the drear months
were lit
by stage spots
and rehearsal room neon
many suns slid since
over the horizon
the cuisine improved –
when it comes to fish
the problem now
is not
the breadcrumbs
last summer
I worked and worked
the sun was a backdrop
in Luxembourg
we spent coffee breaks with our feet in the fish pond
and
deep cracks opened in my little local park
widening the tufts of grass apart
Peta Lily is a theatre performer who also writes. Her last two shows ‘Chastity Belt’ and ‘Imperfection’ were based on poem sequences. This poem was written as part of Wendy Pratt’s Poems to Save the World course in February 2019.
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