(A too-early bout of Spring weather endangered the sprouts of fruit trees in north-eastern America)
We are the plants in Rosemary's garden.
We are sorry for your loss, you fruit trees of North America –
your stillborn infants.
And sorry for ourselves too.
We're dying here.
It wasn't your fault, trees,
and it isn't ours.
The weather has gone wrong! Wickedly wrong!
There, it warmed too soon, and you couldn't carry
your babies to full term. Here, we had
too much of every good thing. Too much sun and too much rain.
The summer just past was fierce. And long.
Rosemary, our care-giver, was sick and couldn't garden
all that long summer.
We wilted, shrivelled, lay down flat.
Then came Autumn with cyclone and flood. The wild rains
finished us.
Goodbye to you, trees of North America. You,
we hope, may live to fruit again.
In 'Speaking for Spring's Stillborn Sprouts', Day 3 of April Poetry Month at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we were asked to speak as the fruit trees. It not being Spring here, that felt too false, so I speak to them instead, in the collective voice of my own plants.
The form is a descort, in which line and stanza lengths are all different.
The form is a descort, in which line and stanza lengths are all different.
