L'aura del Campo

In an elm

Tenés seis años ...you are six.



In an elm



You were ten and decided you were like the elm planted in front of your bedroom window ...arms stretched wide to provide a perch for a bird who'd traveled just to bring you news of another place and time, a symphony of orange black feathers, a collage of fresh green leaves. Green would become the color that you wore, orange your favorite hue, and if you had had a coat of arms: an oriole in an elm tree would do. You had shed the blue boredom of being nine and confined to working class friends and neighbors. You rejoiced in the shimmer of rainbows, both sides of yellow, that bold marigold of summer, indigo fragrance of iris, leaf mold that mellowed in the dry-brown of autumn.

And you were ten. No clue that within five years your favorite tree would die, that you'd travel away from the family house: Falun red trimmed in green, that over forty years would pass before an oriole greeted you with song. But all along you'd hum the notes of once being alive and ten.

gold flash
in an elm;
orioles

© Kåre Enga 2011-03-20 [167.385]



The last poem written before the new year. Need to catch up and post old ones. This one speaks to a younger me. It is autobiographical! *Falun red is a Swedish red ochre. Edited 4/14.



Anything I can get my hands on. I read about Japanese culture yesterday. What to do and not-do. Reminded me of the differences tourists encounter in Costa Rica. Also ...reread about the Costa Rican poets of Pérez Zeledón.



At least the moon has come out and played at night even when the sun is reluctant to share her rays...

61,704