The common rhyme in line 5 of each stanza binds the stanzas together, I hope.
I wrote a previous poem about this magnificent magnolia tree in April 2015, posted here on 2 September 2019. Here's a link.
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In mild November’s balmy air,
The morning sun an orange flare,
I saw that tree and shrub had dropped their leaves
And bare and bony starkly stood resigned
Waiting for winter’s rattling blast,
Except a squat magnolia tree, reclined
Against a fence, which like a field in sheaves
Was stooked with buds as if harvest done
And not the great fast scarce begun.
Those buds, a finger-joint in length,
And bulky in their dog’s-tooth strength,
Like sandstone votives thick upon a shrine,
Olive-yellowed and statements of intent,
Crouched braced for what the snows might cast,
For set so soon, three months of frost and vent
Would smother them before, a breaching mine,
Vesuvius-like they’d incandesce
And spring and lust in flowers confess.
But what of us in thin-boned age
Who heart and rasping lungs assuage,
With time, loose-endedly, to mark this tree,
Will we escape the granite months’ compress,
Come spring to glow like meadows grassed,
Or like the balding tree’s last brittle tress
Of leaves, will we in wizened agony
Fall to the roots to rot in wet
That these great buds bright blooms beget?
In mild November’s balmy air,
The morning sun an orange flare,
I saw that tree and shrub had dropped their leaves
And bare and bony starkly stood resigned
Waiting for winter’s rattling blast,
Except a squat magnolia tree, reclined
Against a fence, which like a field in sheaves
Was stooked with buds as if harvest done
And not the great fast scarce begun.
Those buds, a finger-joint in length,
And bulky in their dog’s-tooth strength,
Like sandstone votives thick upon a shrine,
Olive-yellowed and statements of intent,
Crouched braced for what the snows might cast,
For set so soon, three months of frost and vent
Would smother them before, a breaching mine,
Vesuvius-like they’d incandesce
And spring and lust in flowers confess.
But what of us in thin-boned age
Who heart and rasping lungs assuage,
With time, loose-endedly, to mark this tree,
Will we escape the granite months’ compress,
Come spring to glow like meadows grassed,
Or like the balding tree’s last brittle tress
Of leaves, will we in wizened agony
Fall to the roots to rot in wet
That these great buds bright blooms beget?
====================
© December 2015
