Tuesday Poem: Palm Trees in a Hotel Garden

Palm Trees in a Hotel Garden
... palms fan out
their fingers on the night glass
like starving children
- Susan Wicks

We stand against dark skies.
Behind a transparent wall
unnatural day where strange trees
on forked roots come and go
bearing translucent fruit
beaded with drops of water.
Sometimes they lift it
to their crowns. They are
shifting groves of many colours.
And one slumps low,
rakes his boughs
across a bank of white and black
releasing a flock
of invisible birds.

We wonder how it is
to be so rootless
not to know
those same old familiars
are always by your side.
We fan out our fingers
on the night glass
in invitation:
“sink your roots in soil
lift your branches to the cool air
always and forever
not alone.”

© Catherine Fitchett

"Palm Trees in a Hotel Garden" was first published in Takahe magazine, issue 78, earlier this year. It originated in a class by Joanna Preston, in response to the poem by Susan Wicks from which the quote at the beginning is taken.

The blog has been very quiet lately, as I have had other things keeping me busy. But with National Poetry Day fast approaching, it seemed like a good time to come back to posting a Tuesday Poem.

Tuesday Poem: Song of the Moth

Song of the Moth

Half the world is mute, or we are deaf to it.
What untranslated conversations are hidden from our ears?
Does the earthworm croon subterranean loves songs
as it tops and tails with its hermaphrodite mate?
What does the butterfly hear
through its beautiful delicate knees?
The column of ants marches without music
while silverfish, reducing paper to lacy fragments
consume words but have none of their own.

Sailing ships crossed the oceans where whales
sang arias, backed by a silent chorus.
The pioneers carried little. Tools broke,
clothes wore out. Our forebears with their meagre luggage
having to turn common things to uncommon uses
gathered bag moss cases, stiff and lichened,
to pluck the strings of their autoharps.
It was the only way they knew
to hear moths sing.

© Catherine Fitchett

Song of the Moth was published in Takahe 78 which came out last month. It was inspired by a bizarre piece of trivia that I encountered in a book on insects in the Mobil New Zealand Nature Series: the bag moth was "sometimes used by early settlers as a plectrum for playing the autoharp". I was looking for details for a different poem, but as soon as I saw this, I knew I had to use it somehow.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: The Idea of Trees

The Idea of Trees

The cherry tree has had its last revenge,
its thirsty roots seeking out a crack
in the drainpipe, prising it wider.
We call the plumber to dig up the driveway.
We think we love trees, but we don't.
We are in love with the idea of trees,
try to make them fit the confines
of our tidy suburban plots of land.
They are not tame. We are surrounded
by their amputated limbs
where we try to keep them clear
of the gutters and power lines.
Remember the peach tree,
the one that the neighbours cut down
two summers ago? First they picked all the fruit,
arrived on our doorstep with overflowing bags.
Two weeks later we were still eating,
juice dripping down our wrists and elbows,
as we savoured the fruit
of a tree that didn’t exist.

copyright Catherine Fitchett

*******

My final Tuesday Poem for the year. It should probably be something festive, given the season. At least this one mentions fruit - the cherries we associate with Christmas here in the southern hemisphere, and the peaches that will be ripening by late January and early February.

The poem appears in the latest issue of Takahe magazine, which should be hitting subscribers' mail boxes this week. It's a great magazine - one of the few in New Zealand (possibly the only one) - that still manages three issues a year, and well worth supporting.

The cherry tree referred to in the poem used to stand outside our back door. When we first came here, I didn't realise the fruit was edible. The birds always got to it as soon as a hint of red was showing, so we never had much chance. Eventually the tree towered over our two storey house, and one summer I found two very ripe cherries hiding under a leaf where the birds had missed them. They were delicious. After that we tried various ruses to protect some of the fruit from the birds, including netting, but they were very devious. Eventually we had to cut the tree down, because it was just too close to the house for such a large tree.

This is the last week of Tuesday Poem for 2011. It will return on January 17th. In the meantime, I hope to get in some writing time, along with the general relaxing in the sun that comes at this time of year.