Tuesday Poem - The ngaio tree by Fiona Kidman

The ngaio tree

“..we leave best what we have truly loved.”

                                     Lauris Edmond

So here come the kids, skidding their school bags

across the floor, blazers flung awry on the chairs,

                                                     two grandsons

of which there are five brothers in all.

‘We’ve had exams today,’ they say, exasperated,

 ‘And we had to do that poem, the one you wrote

about Dad’s tree-house in the ngaio. We knew

we’d get it sooner or later. Toby said so,

                                                       and Reuben too.’

‘So what did they ask you?’

‘Oh you know, stuff about what does the poem mean?’

                                                       ‘And you said?’

I’m focusing on the hot chocolate now,

                             pouring it into two mugs.

‘That our Dad had a tree-house and you used to yell

 at him to come down when it got dark and raining.’

‘Nothing about bad dreams and conquering fear?’

                                                       One of them sighs.

‘Teachers don’t know our Dad. Our dad’s our dad.’

That’s true enough, more that than my son anymore

and besides, the meaning of the wretched poem

 has shifted.                            The red-headed woodsman

shakes his head regularly over the fragile

branches, the thin screen of foliage,

the tree’s increasing vulnerability

as another gale sweeps in scattering dry twigs

                                                     ribbons in the sky.

‘Don’t know how much more it can take,’ he says,

                                            laconic, commiserating.

          

           

But there are some things I do know:

 if we stand on the lawn beneath that tree

we see far beyond us dark fires of sunsets

settling over the bay, pastel new moons

cavorting across the sky, the delphinium

days of summer,  mists resting in the far

 hills like the foothills of the Himalayas

and yes the dark scribbles of the tree’s branches

against stormy skies, even though the boy came down

                                                     from the tree long ago

There is all this and more. At some time

or another, every person I have truly loved,

our close family circle, the aunts

                         (save Roberta who never made it here),

 the old old companions of my childhood,

                                                    all the true friends

 have stood beneath this tree.

                                 And I tell myself

 that, so long as I live, if the roots hold

 fast to the bank below and new green shoots

 appear on the branches each spring, all will be 

                                                   as well as it can.

Another wonderful poem from Fiona Kidman’s recent book Where Your Left Hand 
Rests published by Godwit, Random House. It is a most enticing little book, a gift.

http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/Book_Display_46.aspx?CategoryId=14&ProductId=593169