Trees and Seasons

Trees and Seasons

The trees are full of leaves in this land of evergreens. I like these trees – now heavy with rain, their shine dulled. But not like death; like resting. Like going within to absorb all that nourishing water. 

In this small town, the rainforest is ever present – on the surrounding hills, and still in welcome remnants lining our streets.

This is Autumn. Some few trees do lose their leaves. My frangipani which has grown to cover my whole front wall, begins its shedding. It will be beautifully bare for Winter, its curving branches stretching and crossing in a random, leisurely lattice-work.

My childhood trees were willow (introduced) and blue gum (native). The willow I liked best in Spring, making a canopy around me when I sat on the swing my Dad made, hanging from a strong low branch. In Spring that canopy was tenderest green. Soft light shone through, filtered. Hours I dreamed and swung … or simply dreamed, trailing my feet on the ground, seeking the sky through the topmost arc: invisible, private, safe.

 

The blue gum, in a different corner of the yard, was the tree I climbed. I was timid in some ways, and fearful of heights, but this was a solid, spreading tree, easy to access from the wooden fence underneath. The horizontal support beams were just the right heights to make a cling-and-scramble ladder.

My first big step from fence to tree put me in a wide hollow in the lower branches – a resting-place with a floor, a firm back, and safe walls. I used to tuck a book into my belt as I climbed, then sit up there and read for hours among the air and the leaves. When I heard Mum calling, I didn’t respond.

‘Where were you?’ she'd ask when I finally showed.

‘Just reading,’ I’d say, deliberately vague. My blue gum sanctuary was secret.

Robert Graves told me years later, in The White Goddess, that repeatedly sitting under a willow would make one a poet.

Later still, trained in various forms of energy healing, I was given one 'from Spirit', characterised by colour – the same grey-blue, I eventually recalled, as the leaves of my nurturing gum.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #63: Trees at Poets and Storytellers United

 

 

Fragipani image: my own photo © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2019

Willow image uncited, no copyright statement; used in accordance with Fair Use. 

Blue Gum Image: Hunter, John. (2017). Monitoring of Eucalyptus rubida subsp. barbigerorum. 

Haiku on Friday / Tanka on Tuesday, March '21

Haiku on Friday, March '21

'a cesspool'

someone calls facebook

on facebook

5/3/21

And then I wrote no more haiku for March, on Friday or any day. Ah well.

Tanka on Tuesday, March  '21

gifts at my door

bright flowers in water

(in a glass jar)

a local thunder egg

home-grown bananas

being of light

creator of gardens

doer of art

she flits up my front steps

unseen like a fairy

Written 5/3/21 (Friday) 

about 2/3/21 (Tuesday)

Ah well, meant to write more....

I Pray to Bast

I Pray to Bast

Mother-Protector

of cats and people

please look after me –

so I can look after 

this sweet creature

who has come into my care.

Don’t let her dig her tiny claws

too sharply into my skin,

even when it’s only to hold on.

Let her know I’ve got her!

I’ll cradle her gently but firmly. 

I won’t let her fall.

Tiny though she is 

she has been a queen,

matriarch of many kittens.

Now she has retired 

from motherhood, but not 

from being imperious.

Astonishingly, she trusts me –

even allows me affection.

Keep me worthy of this, I pray.

Allow her to know that I know

what is safest for her here 

in my home, now hers.

Help me, please, to understand 

her voiced commands

her body language

her meaningful stare.

Help me turn power struggles

into cooperation.

Meanwhile I rearrange

tools and objects to give her

a path across the heights

of our living space.

(She likes to climb. I like 

her being able.) 

Mother-Protector Bast,

thank you for your wisdom

and agency, bringing us

together, here and now

in our good maturity,

in ways that are right for cats. 

To be shared with Poets and Storytellers United via Weekly Scribblings #64: Beloved Companions.

That Birthday

That Birthday

Again that birthday sneaks under my guard

and suddenly I’m thinking of my son –

my youngest son – and now again it’s hard 

resisting recollection. Once the sun

beamed in his youthful smile but now the man 

is a door closed, the child mere memory. 

His birthday’s coming. Will he think of me?

Just born, he lay naked in the crook of my arm,

gazing at his new world confidently.

Neither of us guessed its power for harm.

Sharing with Writers' Pantry #63 at Poets and Storytellers United.

On with the Dance

On with the Dance

Now they come dancing

on soft, precise paws:

the tabbies, the greys,

the two black 

shadowy

just beyond sight, 

glimpsed 

in corners of vision

or else fully seen

with the eyes of dream

or consciously summoned

memory 

brought back to life

in welcome moments,

drawn by the newcomer,

number eight 

in my roster

of feline children,

furry friends, loves 

of my blessed life

gathering to see

and I dare say greet

the living cat

who graces me now

with her sweet face

her intent gaze

her unique coat of sable

her dancing feet.

Written in response to Weekly Scribblings #62: Shut Up And Dance With Me at Poets and Storytellers United.

Top to bottom: Guinivere, Levi and Freya, Selene, Poppi.
Not shown: Isolde (tabby), Sam (tabby) and Ishtar (grey).

The New Relationship

The New Relationship

My girlfriend is presently sleeping –

my new girlfriend, who only moved in

four days ago – lying on her side,

one paw tucked under her head.

She senses I’m writing about her, feels

my attention, my focus; opens one lazy eye

at me, closes it again next moment

and hunkers comfortably down.

I give thanks that this new relationship

embarked on with hope and trepidation

is already going so smoothly. I offer up

silent, fervent prayers of deep relief.

The first two days went well. Yesterday

she went off her food, prowled the house

searching, I’m certain, for someone 

who won’t be back: her favourite person

mutually adored. He wouldn’t have left her

if he’d had any choice. He scooped her up,

tiny in his great hands, for a quick 

last cuddle and kiss. ‘Take care of her for me.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

Last night I gave her soothing Reiki

and told her too, telepathically,

I’d do my very best. This morning

for the first time I lifted her up myself

in a shoulder hug, crooning my love

into her nine-year-old deaf ears that can still

feel vibrations. I saw she’d eaten hearty.

It’s different (I found out last time)

when you don’t raise them from kittens.

Not your fur-child but your house-mate –

or so it was with regal Selene.

My last girlfriend started difficult,

progressed to stand-offish, always 

had boundaries even when we arrived

at fiercely intense mutual devotion.

I never thought I’d get over her.

But two years later – years of grief –

a hint of loneliness arose, coinciding

perfectly with someone else’s need.

Living entirely for oneself, that freedom

eventually palls.  My new girlfriend

curls on her blanket, ears still alert,

willing to explore our new adventure.

A retelling in verse of the tale I told in prose a few days ago.

Shared (five days later) with Poets and Storytellers United's Writers' Pantry #62.

Never Say Never

 Never Say Never

A cat’s advertised, needing a home. I’m surprised by sudden longing. I said ‘No more’ after my last darling died. I realise – two years of processing the grief; now I’ve become lonely.

L phones just then. ‘Quick!’ I say, ‘Talk me out of this.’

Instead, she says, ‘M knows of a beautiful cat needing a new home. Otherwise she’ll be put down.’ 

(The cat in the ad was safely in foster-care.) I phone M. Then I phone the cat owner, and arrange a ‘let’s see’ visit. 

We click! We have things in common including our ideas about cat care. The family must move; there’ll be no room for Poppi. She needs her own zone: she hates and attacks their other three cats. Or she needs to be someone’s only cat. They’d rather put her to sleep than let anyone have her who wouldn’t look after her properly.

Poppi is 9, Burmese, sable coloured (dark brown that looks black to me). She is very deaf, very affectionate, and she’s a completely indoor cat. Owner explains, Burmese are too fearless for their own good so must be kept in. That suits me. I don’t want her out killing birds, or being killed by a snake.

I visit three times over two weeks so she gets to know me. At the first visit, I say, 'I'm in!' The owner does too. Poppi indicates she likes me. I let her come to me, as you do with cats. She becomes progressively more affectionate.

‘Bring her to me on the 13th,’ I say. ‘I’ll have four days free then to be with her.’ They bring all her toys and paraphernalia, some of her favourite foods, various instructions, her papers, their own palpable grief … scoop her up in one last hug, then leave quickly.

She has a good explore, then politely tells me it's her dinner time by going to her water dish and looking up at me expectantly. After dinner she settles in the bed atop her giant scratching post, parked by the window.  She welcomes my strokings and scritchings. 

Next morning she lies on the floor, stretches, turns over, asks for a tummy rub. I oblige ecstatically – such a sign of trust!

 

369 words written for Poets and Storytellers United's Weekly Scribblings #61: Starting a New Relationship. 

A Troubled Relationship

 A Troubled Relationship

You’ve been out of my life now

for years already, but your voice

keeps telling me things in my head,

not from the bad times but the good –

when you were my pal as well as

my youngest. I like to think

those times were true (they felt 

and still feel true) but I know

not to reach out, not to attempt

in any way to go back, because

that boy is gone, and that young man,

long gone, and you don’t hear him now.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #60 at Poets and Storytellers United.

(Yes, I do mean the last line as as written.)

The Mind At Play

The Mind At Play

On a haiku site I discover enso. One poet uses them alongside her verses. Intrigued, I google.

I come away with the idea that an enso is both a figure in Japanese calligraphy and a way of Zen meditation.

One draws a circle freehand, open or closed, a continuous line (sometimes two). I understand it encompasses everything. Also it's the void.

This practice is not a striving for the perfect circle. (Nor is it done thoughtlessly.) Each is valid in itself. It’s an exploration of inner space.

Excited – all Western impatience, no in-depth research – I dive right in, thrilled with the idea of meditation by doing. 

Though I don’t dare think I’m an artist, I sometimes draw, just for me.

I grab sketch-book, brushes, water-colours (not ink) and draw an enso a day: each one a different colour. After I’ve been through all colours, I resolve, I’ll repeat in different media. 

Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights bookshop – hugely important in the history of literature – dies aged 101. I write a three-line tribute.

I want to post this on Instagram. Instagram is a visual medium. I try to make micropoems I post there look as good as I can, but this time I take things further. I print the text, cut it out, and paste it in the centre of my latest enso. 

I photograph the result, run the photo through filters on my iPhone, then edit it for vibrance, clarity, saturation…. 

‘Beautiful tribute,’ someone comments, ‘– art and words.’

My friend – a real, marvellous artist – has a birthday. A mystical four-line poem comes to me. I realise it’s a portrait of her. I put that inside an enso too. (I try handwriting this one at first, but my writing doesn’t please my eye.)

I take a photo, manipulate it as before, print it, label it a portrait of her, and laminate it.

When I give it to her, her eyes widen, she gasps and holds it to her heart a moment.

I toy with the idea of a different shape that I might use around a poem. I think I will, perhaps very soon. Also, I won’t stop drawing my meditative daily enso. 

369 words written in response to Weekly Scribblings #59 at Poets and Storytellers United, and specifically inspired by a line from the musical Hamilton: 'I'm looking for a mind at work'. I don't know much about that musical, but my mind has been working on something new lately, as described above. Then I recollected that art is not work but play. 

Note:
My artist friend is also an amazing gardener.

Images: 
1. Ensō (c. 2000) by Kanjuro Shibata XX. Available for use via Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

2 and 3 © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2021.

Also a Path – Short poems in February (2021)

Also a Path

Micropoems in February (2021)

my ocean

the great blue Pacific

is also a path

#haiku

12/2/21

piercing –

that moment of pain

for dead loves

this Valentine’s Day 

then I recall the joy

#tanka

14/2/21

during COVID

Moon Calendar quietly

gets two years old

#senryu

16/2/21

sneezing

I get out the bedsox —

high summer!

#senryu

17/2/21

You may live to 200

while appearing 30,

said the angel.

But I thought I’d become

more and more lonely 

for old friends; I declined.

#American sentences x2 arranged as verse.

21/2/21

When the kids

were swift and mischievous

I Dalek-spoke

‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’

They merely rolled their eyes.

#kyoka

21/2/21