The Witherness of the Fig-Tree
Fruit was demanded, out of season,
Before the wasps had arrived.
A prophet cursed you, for no reason,
Except that he was denied.
Why so passive-aggressive that day ?
Why was he out to settle a score ?
Or did he just take your life away,
To be a metaphor ?
Was it power or wine made him drunk ?
Yet, after his magic tricks,
The Romans took your withered trunk
To make them a crucifix.
Hemlock
Catastrophic carrots that will help us see the dark
As it swallows us if we should swallow them.
Surprisingly accessible in any unkempt park
With its toxins and its bloody-mottled stem.
As if a mutant celery our negligence has freed,
Or some parsley of the never-to-be-sprigged,
There’s nothing that’s angelica about this devil’s weed –
Best not sup upon what Socrates has swigged.
The water hemlock, or cowbane, is an equally-deadly cousin in North America, but the pine trees with the stupidly-identical name have nothing to do with it. They were just judged at one point to smell the same, and nobody it seems ever slapped them round the face and told them to stop being so damned confusing for no good reason.
What are you, then ?
Self-seedling, settler-sprout –
A start-up venture risk-taker,
Pushing-through and on the scout,
You upward-mover, windy-shaker.
What will you become, young bud ?
Are you a goer or a dud ?
So little green, and so much mud –
Watch out ! I hear there’s slugs about,
I fear this is no easy acre.
One lone leaf, and you’re a grass,
Or bulb, or orchid, or a palm.
But two, and you’re the other class –
They’re both an embryonic farm.
So what will you become, new shoot ?
Will you grow tall, will you bear fruit ?
So little leaved, but taking root –
Well lass, let’s meet at Michelmas,
If you should reach the Autumn’s calm.
Missing Those Kissing Toes
The tinsel has been strung all week,
The holly wreathed around the door,
The cards bedeck the mantlepiece,
The tree is lit-up like a store.
But if we came inside to peek
On where to kiss – no go, it seems…
The mistletoe has yet to lease
It’s tenure on the ceiling beams.
The trouble is, our hostess speaks,
It dries out quickly in the warm –
And pleasures in the kiss decrease,
She finds, when beauties don’t conform.
For who can peck on rosy cheeks
Beneath such yellow-wilted leaves ?
And so, the gooser of the geese
Won’t dangle down till Christmas Eve.
“It isn’t really quaint and meek,
You know, but a toxic parasite.”
So says my clued-up, teenage niece –
“Infact, just like this kissing blight:
Demanding favours, beak-to-beak,
And women feeling bound to please.
From Pagan Briton, Ancient Greece –
Let’s leave tradition on the trees.”
But we don’t need to be so bleak,
My love, with New Year looming big !
Let’s open up our Winter fleece
And warm our lips beneath the sprig.
But if we came inside to seek
A spot to kiss, we’re out of luck –
The mistletoe, by cruel caprice,
Has not a berry left to pluck…
Cemetery Flowers
Besides from the bunches laid with care,
There’s plenty of blooms around –
Peacefully scenting reverent air
And rising out of the ground.
And looking as though they have always grown there,
Spreading from grave to grave, unbound.
Lilies creep around the edges,
Speedwell bids the souls farewell,
And lichen colours urns and ledges,
Where the lady’s bedstraws dwell
Wrought-iron railings form the hedges,
Butterflies enchant their spell.
Yews, of course, have long been prized,
With folklore running deep,
And cypresses are well-advised
For the greenery they keep,
And Trees of Heaven, naturalised,
Like some who lie asleep.
Wych-hazel makes herself at home,
But cherries are out of place –
Confetti is such a frivolous foam
That doesn’t leave a trace.
Forget-me-nots, meantime, will roam,
Wherever they find a space.
The dead, of course, don’t care what’s living up there,
They’ve other concerns,
But graveyards are gardens we all must share,
Be we friends or weeds or worms.
And ev’ry flower we all can spare
Will help us to come to terms.
I deliberately tried to shake up the rhythm a bit between verses, to see if it could still flow. As for the location, I have visited before here and here (and, more pertinent to the season at hand, over here).
Floriography
I wanted to speak the language of flowers,
Just like my heroines of old.
But how can the secrets of petals be ours
When meeting in Winter’s cold ?
I guess there’s holly and mistletoe,
And snowdrops still to come, perhaps ?
But love, I fear, has yet to grow,
And plenty of time to lapse…
I wanted to win you with floral wooing,
Now that Spring has raised his head –
But tulips are for financial ruin,
And lilies are for the dead.
I guess there’s always the dandelion,
Though who sees the beauty beneath the weed ?
Our love, I fear, is swiftly dying,
Like daffodils gone to seed.
I wanted to cast such blossoming spells,
With Summer so rampant and velveteen –
But buttonhole-sunflowers smother lapels,
And roses come purple and green.
I guess there’s just too much to choose –
Exotic, or native ? We cannot be both.
So love, I fear, is swamped for a muse,
And trapped in the undergrowth.
I wanted to breathe the tongue of the blooms,
But who remembers the code these days ?
And now that Autumn is blowing our rooms,
It feels too late for bouquets.
I guess, though, dahlias could be for darlings ?
And conkers for fun, and pumpkins for screams ?
For love, I feel, will still find it charming,
Whatever it thinks it all means.
Leaving Inktober behind, there is just time for a seasonal bouquet before things get spook-ay...
Pyrophiles
Some plants only germinate through fire,
Waiting out the years
Until the tragedy appears.
They need the forest hotter, tinder dryer,
Even dropping oil
To make a tarpit of the soil.
But there hasn’t been a fire through here, I’m told,
In fifty years of cold –
I guess these trees are all the same-age-old.
Their life-cycle needs the flames be fanned,
They need to taste the char
Before they’ll shoot a single spar.
They need apocalypse to sweep the land
To birth their phoenix seeds,
To grow within the ash of weeds.
And there are even beetles who must birth
Within the hell-scorched earth,
(Though salamanders don’t, for what it’s worth).
Pepper-Leper
That subtle hint of rosemary,
That teasing tang of thyme,
Where parsley peps with a pleasing edge
And fennel venerates our veg.
The wisdom of the sage is free
To sing the zing of lime,
As basil dances on our tongues,
And spearmint sweetens-up our lungs.
But herbs in all their subtlety
Are pinched-off in their prime –
Just swamped beneath the mono-taste
With which are dished are debased
As cooks commit with careless glee
A culinary crime
Of blanding soups and stews and rice
With boring bucketfuls of spice.
Horn of Plenty
Nature’s abundance
Is only abundant
Because of our breeding and care.
We keep safe with fences
From predators hellbent
On forcing our people to share.
We took weedy grasses
And made them triumphant
By winnowing pearls from the tat.
Through thousands of passes
We bred out redundants,
And kept only those who grew fat.
We took crabby apples
And looked for those farthest
From regular bitter and small.
So don’t pray at chapels
For bountiful harvests –
It’s farmers who let us grow tall !
We beefed-up our cattle,
And fluffed-up our sheep,
And we hen-pecked our hens to lay more.
We’ve long waged the battle
’Gainst ringworm and creep,
And upping our yields by the score.
And yes, it’s true sometimes
We’ve made matters worse
In our efforts to keep us all fed.
But we’ll undo such crimes
As we learn from the curse,
In our bid to be better well-bred.
But to reap all we sow
Could yet come to a stop
If we don’t keep our labours up still.
The hard row to hoe
For the cream of the crop
Could succumb to the dew of the mill.
Nature’s abundance
Is only abundant
Because of our breeding and care.
It takes great expense,
But it’s very well spent,
Till the earth is encouraged to share.
Garden Overspills
Low branches over pavements,
Should I bob or step out in the road ?
Who leaves wych-elms any which-how,
Never pruned, and deeply downward-bowed ?
Though less likely misbehaving,
More likely negligence at fault.
I ought to hack them off right now,
But more than like I get done for assault.
Double-deckers punch right through,
But my head has to duck beneath each stalk.
It’s worse when it’s been raining,
And I get a hairwash thrown into my walk.
But appletrees, and conkers too,
Are lack-of-headroom serial abusers –
Lurking, swelling, for each braining –
As the Autumn comes, so come the bruises.
