I couldn't seem to do anything with this week's poetry stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect. My diminishing rhymes refused to cooperate. So, I returned to another difficult poetic form which I have tried and abandoned many times over the past few months - the ballade - and this time, it worked! Yippee! It also gave me a poem about Eucalypts - something I have found very difficult to write about because of this poem, which I have posted for a previous Poetry Friday and which for me, describes the bush so perfectly that any attempt I make always suffers from the comparison. Hmmm... my computer is really playing up tonight, so if I manage to get this posted before Saturday dawns, will you buy me breakfast at Milliways? I guess not - unless I can manage three more impossible things - like catching up with the backlog in Google Reader, answering an email from an old friend, and getting Wombat dressed without tears... somehow I doubt it :)
The Eucalypts
The cocky's perch, the sly goanna's lair,
the hangout where the fruitbats fuss and tease,
a shelter for the shy koala-bear,
the acrobatic possum's high trapeze.
Above the whispered swaying of the breeze
a piercing song the shrill cicada thrums:
the music of the bushland's towering trees.
My heart will always live amongst the gums.
A blue haze rises in the hot sun's glare
as oil exudes from eucalyptus leaves
and shimmers in the overheated air:
a breath of freshness 'midst the city's wheeze;
a cure-all antiseptic for disease;
a favourite of all dinkum aussie mums;
a remedy for sniffle, cough and sneeze.
My heart will always live amongst the gums.
An aromatic scent beyond compare
as blossom-heavy branches seek to please
the lorikeets; a pair of gang-gangs, rare,
return each year for gumnuts, and the bees
with pollen-laden bags and golden knees
are gathering their loot with honeyed hums.
No substitute could compensate for these:
my heart will always live amongst the gums.
Oh royal eucalypts, your majesties
give blessings beyond reckoning or sums.
Though I may travel far across the seas,
my heart will always live amongst the gums.
Our host for Poetry Friday this week is Elaine from Wild Rose Reader.
3 comments:
That is just lovely! I love all the animals -- which also, of course, seem so exotic to a city-dwelling American like me who usually just sees squirrel and rabbit. Your descriptions of the eucalyptus trees reminded me of the groves in California; their smell was one of the most amazing things in the world.
Schelle,
I'm right there with you. My diminishing rhymes were terrible!
I love what you went with instead. It's really lovely.
This was great fun to read - love the goannas, the gang-gangs, the gumnuts!
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