THE LAST TREE YOU EVER CLIMB

-


The Last Tree You Ever Climb


Up here you are not the middle child

sandwiched between two pretty-pretty, girly-girly sisters.

Not the odd one out in the family,

the tomboy who’s forever climbing things!


Up here

at the very top

of this giant of a tree,

where the wood rasps rough kisses

against your skin, the leaves are friendly

and the birds have accepted you.


Up here,

surrounded by open fields and endless sky,

you see a bigger world.


Although the day will come when you’ll move house

and your mother, her mind on something else,

will let drop a promise to come back

for the precious works of art (as you consider them)

left pinned to your bedroom walls.


But your entire life shall be full of such promises.


Like the assurance that one day

you will fall in love, marry,

grow broody, get pregnant

and give birth. Several times.

Because that’s the way stories end, isn’t it?


But a veil is still drawn over all of that –

all those promises blown up bright,

then, over time, slowly sinking

into wrinkled scraps.


Right now, up here where the views are wide,

you can’t see even a minute ahead

to the moment when your older sister (the prettiest, the girliest)

will flounce up to the base of this tree

and tip up her face.

Her high-pitched, clear as a bell voice

will set the birds aflutter,

the careful, cruel words

slipping up between the leaves

to cut you like knives.


Your cool face will turn hot,

your eyes will sting, and you’ll crash

and scrape and scramble down,

ripping your tomboy clothes.


But this little scene (the end

and also the beginning of everything)

is still dormant, like the knot

of an acorn in its tiny cup

that may or may not

become an oak.


Up here, right now,

where distant clouds inch across the blue

and fields ripple like silk,

you still dream of being a soldier, a captain.

Up here you are master of your ship,

And life is good.


Nathalie Abi-Ezzi


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LEGEND

-
Image
LEGEND   The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle and a black dog running behind. Cobwebs snatched at his feet, rivers hindered him, thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind and the sky turned into an unlucky opal, but he didn't mind. I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out                            any spider I meet, said he to his dog and his rifle. The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks with his old black hat on his head. Mountains jumped in his way, rocks rolled down on him, and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead. And the rain came down like mattocks. But he only said, I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day, and he went on over the paddocks. When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling, Up came the night ready to swallow him, like the barrel of a gun, like an old black hat, like a black dog hungry to follow him. Then the ...
Read more

THE DESERTED VILLAGE

-
Image
  AN EXTRACT FROM THE DESERTED VILLAGE Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed, Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene! How often have I paused on every charm, The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made! How often have I blest the coming day, When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree, While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old surveyed; And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground, And slight...
Read more

SLIGHTLY DELAYED POETRY NEWSLETTER FOR JANUARY 25/26TH 2021 PART ONE

-
V   READING ALOUD Damien mentioned how much more  confident the group had become when they read a poem aloud.  I thought people might find this list helpful, I don't think I've ever seen a guide to reading poetry aloud before. I stress that I have included the list  NOT  because I think people need improvement but because I found the list interesting. Indeed, I find those times when we have the opportunity to share the reading of a poem quite magical, as our distinctive voices blend together to create the harmonious whole. The list is taken from James's last book  The Fire of Joy: Roughly Eighty Poems to Get by Heart and Say Aloud . In his preface he describes his schoolboy experience of every pupil having to learn and recite a poem every day and not being allowed home until that was achieved. It's a very personal anthology  and I can't see many of us having the stamina to memorise Burn's  Tam O'Shanter  but the poems are varied and inte...
Read more