2 Poems

About Tree ‘7B’, as TAMS termed it before they chopped this beautiful heritage tree down, a young Ainslie resident wrote this:

There she goes - my great silver hope, gone forever
Thump....eighty-two spectacular years brought to an end by human ignorance
Thump....decades of natural consolidation, ever culminating in layer upon layer of bark and leaves and trunk
Your time had not come, you never did wrong, you were....
Looking over us, seeing through us, knowing us better than we know ourselves.....
Thump....a home, a beacon, a hope, life as full as life could be....gone
Thump....her mellifluous bosom, the work of endless day upon day, now ashen, fallen...,but a memory
How does man presume to know or compete with this natural grandeur and wisdom?
What brings him to strike down life?
What gives him reason to kill hope?

Thump....in quiet reverie the ghosts of workers and drones and queens surround your broken limbs
Thump....uprooted, the soil of your forebears lies exposed to the ravages of sun and rain, no longer protected by your embrace
What right has a man to destroy you?
You, who go on being despite all reason not to; you who are always there; you who remind us of what we are and what we might be....
Thud....and there before me lies my great silver hope.....
she who epitomises all that is right in this world is now laid to rest by a stroke of ignorance
And now all that remains is a mound of dust.... not a tear, no shame, no regret....just dust and silence....
brown dust lying by the side of the road for passers by not to see
Who would even know that you existed.....except me.....?
There.... you're gone now....my great silver hope....gone forever

Charlie Wood
___________________

Corroboree Park in Spring

Written 1995 for young people by an Ainslie resident

Fluffy tufts,
Breathy glancing wisps
of silky silvery
gum-tree blossom.

Wisps of pollen, swept on breezes
Or carried, glowing,
on the legs of humming honey bees
Heading for hives
That fill hollows in these
ancient trees.


Blossoms, glistening tree stars of spring,
in sprays and little sprigs
On branches, on trunks of trees
In stands of gray-green silver gums
In my park,
In moonlight and day light and dusk,
In silver and gold.


Clumps of tickly, lemony blossoms
That brush and blush my cheek
As I pass beneath a bowing branch,
Bowing low. Spring bower.


The smell to me is so sweet
That I feel rapt, so drowsy I feel
That I could sink down and doze so deeply
Who knows when I might wake.
Or whether?


From here
I hear faint entreaties of
Bugs and beetles, ants and
Dry vibrating crickets in the wet ground,
Praying mantis
In corroborees, in little co-motions,
All praying to the hot blue sky
For rain,
dreaming for more rain.


Bring more rain, sky gods!
over the hills
Bring more rain!
Dreaming until the blue sky cracks!
Flings on its gunmetal grey cloak
Rolls out its ammo and pelts the earth
And silver flashes down the
Branches and slides down the trunks
And trickles into the earth
And galahs scream with joy,
Gang Gangs flap,
And cockatoos cackle and tumble in their
Tree gymnasiums,
Fairy wrens fluff up in the cooling air
and flit into their white-lined nests
And spiders belt for cover.


This all makes me melt.
I am no longer earth-bound,
No longer solid.
Dropping every resistence
I am released
And suddenly up I go into the top canopy branches.


And from there I fly!
I fly, fly on the crest of warm wet wind
Over our perfect park land.
Time loosens, dissolves.
Space is no matter at all.
I see the ghosts of the old children’s playground,
See-saws I see,
tennis tournaments with tea,
Bachelors in bushes, with laughing girls in dresses,
Picnics on rugs, lemonade in jugs,
And then a white wedding party coming.
Rose petal confetti and music I can hear
Filtered through leaves.
Excitement in the air!


Will I ever come down?
Why should I? Why would I?
And there’s no time here
So I never need come down.
Unless I feel like it.
Until I feel like it.


Parents? They will mind, will be out of their minds?
No, they will understand.
I will brush her cheek too with scented flowers,
I will ask the honey bees
To fill her ears too with their soft humming,
I will have the trees breathe their lemon and eucalyptus on him too,
To remind them of what they already know.
They will understand.