Ha, thanking the trees, then Max. Yes, I liked it too, & restless wandering through those arboreal memories...
And for us up here, yours are all 'gums'...
Doug
On 2013-08-21, at 4:17 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Far more than an arboreal roll call, a celebration of diverseness I hear. Thanks, Max.
>
> Bill
>
> On 22/08/2013, at 3:51 AM, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Max, if I could love this poem more, I don't know how it could be. Very
>> profoundly beautiful. This piece offers a wonderful feeling, and its
>> precision is a joy.
>>
>> Sheila, thanking you.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 4:49 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Trees
>>>
>>> I shall die without learning the names
>>> of these trees, and then it won't matter.
>>>
>>> How good in the park to be on more
>>> than nodding terms - on first-name speaking terms!
>>>
>>> A few of course I know, some even
>>> by botanical names - cupressus
>>>
>>> macrocarpa is a favourite,
>>> thanks to my Taranaki childhood.
>>>
>>> There they made dairy-farm windbreaks,
>>> melancholy, much-mutilated;
>>>
>>> lawsoniana - big hedge we kids crawled
>>> tunnelling darkly through, greening our limbs;
>>>
>>> pinus insignis, so dominant
>>> south of Auckland, where after passing
>>>
>>> lush Waikato pastures, soon you
>>> enter a zone of nothing but insignis,
>>>
>>> sinisterly totalitarian
>>> everywhere - insignis and in health,
>>>
>>> as we used to say. Right to the peak
>>> of steep mountains, they stood tall.
>>>
>>> Their clear-felled miles: desolate -
>>> soon replanted, shooting densely up.
>>>
>>> Tree-ferns at their margins spoke
>>> of the old bush - fronds to be fond of.
>>>
>>> Cabbage-trees! - statuesque dignity,
>>> deserving prouder names. Cordylines
>>>
>>> (I had to look them up) - respectable -
>>> name without nostalgia factor.
>>>
>>> The tree-names lacking are European:
>>> all those novels I've read about folk
>>>
>>> under their elms, beech, oaks, what-have-you -
>>> oaks I'm happy with, vague on the rest.
>>>
>>> Fondling oakleaves and acorns is like
>>> a dialogue annually renewed.
>>>
>>> Those others - their leaves die and fall,
>>> and are renewed half-noticed,
>>>
>>> unfocused. At the Botanics,
>>> I rush from tree to tree thinking Now
>>>
>>> I know you - till I leave, vaguely,
>>> as when dashing round a gallery
>>>
>>> with countless labels calling Remember me.
>>> The tree that saw me through childhood illness
>>>
>>> watching at my window, filtering sun
>>> and moon, I never thanked nor knew its name.
>>>
>>> Macrocarpa, lawsoniana - thanks.
>>
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
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Art is always the replacing of indifference by attention.
Guy Davenport
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