Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Deforested, Not Good Behavior

Here is an allegory, I guess. Or it is a story of a forest lost, but, I think, not from the actions of men. Maybe as a story this took place aeons ago. Maybe witnessed by the Saurians in some way, or perhaps later because I think this forest was originally deciduous. But then in this location some kind of change created a swamp...then the swamp dried up too...The uprooted comment in this story is in fact something that can happen to a tree more than one way...to people too. The way this gnarly one is speaking of it - the forest deserted him, leaving him without roots, and without love.


Deforested

Once there was forest
Where now dried out swamp and me
Standing here, gnarly.
Old before my time,
Cut short except for one snag,
I was uprooted
Far too long ago.
I miss the mists and tall green
Trees, the growth beneath,

And most, I miss you.


****************************


I have ivy living at the base of bamboo. Who the hell did that?? They both love to spread. Also in the ivy in two different places in my yard I have had to take out yellow jacket nests. They really like to live under ivy. I actually have the one kind of ivy but two different kinds of bamboo. This stuff came with the house when my mother bought it. She bought the house to get old in. She succeeded. I bought my sister out and sold my old house because this one has a rental in the back yard, roofs tied together with a breezeway to keep the worst of the rain off the backyard tenant. I have the income, and also the doubled property tax of a duplex in a neighborhood zoned for duplex. I am really itchy (grass allergy) in bamboo. The dust of ivy makes me sneeze when I work in it. Alot. But at least it doesn't make my immune system go haywire. So here's a whimsy.


Not Good Behavior

Like ivy clinging
I will not let go of things.
When I'm pried away
I let loose this dust,
To make you sneeze your brains out.
Then I wilt, despair.

This is not good behavior.
I'm a little bit ashamed.

12 comments:

  1. I would reply to you if I knew which what where who hit home. :)

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  2. The first one hit home for me
    The ending line....

    "And most, I miss you."

    Actually, the whole poem hits home.

    Okay, both poems hit home as I reread again:)

    This line caught me
    "Then I wilt, despair."
    I wasn't expecting despair, but it fits so well. And the bad behavior matched with it -- a truth for so many of us, I think. I know for sure it is a truth for me.

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  3. the ivy one is almost perfect nonsense.... i like it a lot..... Ed Hardy

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  4. Faith, your comments touch me as you know.

    Yes, when ivy is pulled away from the fence, I hear small despaiing cries and then feel the resentment build until poof all this dust is around my node add I cadd breathe
    so good....AHHHHHHCHOOOOOOOOO!

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  5. Ghost, the second poem is hardly nonsense if you happen to be the unruly English Ivy living in my yard under the tree or along the fenceline and in the bamboo. In that case there are regular vicious events to defend against and not much to defend with, except ivy dust. Ivy dust has far less power than pixie dust. Ivy likes it when yellow jackets decide to nest under. Those little bastards are touchy and a bit more powerful.

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  6. yes but you are anthropomorphizing the ivy and becoming the plant to the point were it is not clear whether the bad behavior and shame is yours, the ivy's or both..... i suspect it is both..... so you and the ivy are all mushed together in perfect symbiotic mushiness.

    aNd iT mAKes mE kRAZEe......

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  7. I love these. They appeal to the botanist and gardener in me. :) The first one may be an allegory, but I empathized with the tree anyway.

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  8. Ghost, I am so utterly sorry, you just have no idea, to have you slide into alternative mentation,
    ersatz hallucination, divots in the disturbed emotional scaffold.

    This is not what I had hoped for, that instead the green of the ivy would seep out into the gill slits in the ectoplasm and reconstruct it, turn it into protoplasm. That then like Pinocchio, who turned into a real boy, you could become real in your own special way too.

    Perhaps it is the lack of your own reality you feel, oh cyberghost who Danses with LED.

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  9. Rachel, nice to hear from you. Yes, Deforested does work straight up if you think trees can write poetry. I do think like that, so did Tolkein, at least they could for him in Middle Earth, at least certain trees could. Maybe this gnarly old thing is cousin to an Ent.

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  10. Ghost, you know I only have your best interests at heart...

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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