Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Saturday 26 September 2009

Farewell Sweet Prince


.

File:Prunus mume Tojibai1.jpg


Prunus mume, "Tojibai", Osaka: photo by KENPEI, 2008




The sun shone for you in the winter afternoon
Brightness fell from the air
Your pain was finally over
After too many crazy hours of holding you
A fool who can’t let anything go

I wrapped your beautiful jungle body
Snowy belly afloat in lavender and cyclamen and roses
Furled with an old blue towel you liked to slumber on
And laid you in the ground
Beneath that old plum tree you used to bask lordly
Under and ponder the frantic squirrels


8:30 A.M.
12/27/99



File:Prunus mume Koutoji1.jpg
 

Prunus mume, "Koutoji", Osaka:  photo by KENPEI, 2008

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How sad. I buried a stray dog I had adopted by a creek nearby and still I remember him moaning at my door to let him in at night.


Aren't prunus delighful?

aditya said...

Sad ... Years back our family had got a Himalayan sheep dog from somewhere. He died 3 months later. Though I never was/am a pet-lover, I was sad. It reminded me of him ...

TC said...

This cat was a black-and-white "Tuxedo" fellow whose neckpiece of snow white fur against the black reminded us a wee bit of a photo we have of Marcel Proust in a cravat, so that this sweet and gentle Prince came to be called Prince Marcel.

Thanks Lucy and Aditya, yes it was a sad occasion; it's taken me many years to strain some of the tears out of this one so as to make it (almost) public-ready, still I don't know, maybe it's not quite dry yet. (Then again, perhaps I almost hope not.)

I thought maybe the way that old plum tree dies back to a ragged stick-figure of a tree every winter (as when this poem was writ) and then so miraculously sends out new shoots and leaves and blossoms in the spring might suggest a small parable the pictures here could convey.

Every year I'm more surprised it manages to somehow renew itself despite all the dead withered limbs... reminds me of myself a little bit, though I haven't proved quite as renewable of late.

BTW, for those like Lucy who are lovers of Prunus in its young and vigorous and exploding-with-life state, do be sure to check out the wondrous Pink Patagonian Springtime now on display at Locos por Naufragar:

Magic Visions Stirring

TC said...

...and as perhaps there can never be too much of this good thing called Prunus, here are some more

Pink Trees