Joy! Sheer joy! Old
trees dying and acacias
thinning, mood decaying,
discovering seedlings merged
with emptiness, scoured
ground: self-sown
out of dormant
deep red below
sand let loose to rise
in breach, outgrowing
hungry roos whose pruning
encourages branching, fulminating
verdant on a hot, hot day
because roots have worked
long, been working away
before the show; let growth
emerge on singular terms,
odds stacked as odds
might stack if given a go:
still tough and driven,
selective, perorating
a precise system but saying,
'we are outside politics,
your speeches your self
where it can't be imagined,
vascular elucidation
staying open to some hope
that all will grow back again,
just the same, same seed
same dead leaves, dry branches,
the same root of joy,
sheer joy!
On the bare brow of bloody dirt
in front of the house we're learning
there are six seasons, that thick
green shoots of bulb-growth divide
winter. Beneath the 'randonmess'
of ntive trees, they stand out
precisely. I'd guess freesias
and daffodils. In summer
and its adjacent seasons, the hump
of dried-off foliage was ambiguious.
You couldn't tell with confidence
that anything else would ever
emerge. But then, Cape Tulip
is a 'weed' throughout the valley,
and not seeing it in summer
doesn't mean its pink sea
of exclusion won't draw
the poisoners to try – failingly –
to wipe it out. What dormant intent's
contained in buylbs and corms
that people hate? What odes
to mystery and constrained sexuality
do they possess? Maybe more,
a warped self-hatred the freesias
and daffodils clench but don't name:
bold as brass on a spring morning,
never looking over their shoulders.