Garden Island Poetry Contest awardee Gae Rusk’s ‘Solitary Tree Song’

• Editor’s Note:  April was National Poetry Month. Lihu‘e Public Library hosted the Garden Island Poetry Contest, challenging poets to write a chant. Prize-winners have their poems published in The Garden Island over the next four weeks. Gae Rusk is an awardee in the adult division, for her poem “Solitary Tree Song.”

Solitary Tree Song

By Gae Rusk

Alone I putter in my

orchard

where I mutter to my trees

using these soliloquies and

other vocal bursts

to revive past bads

and say at last

what I should have said at first

In my orchard I am at my best

allowing all my heinous bones

an overdue and well-earned rest

plus affording me the chance

to eat my pride

to sing my moan

to learn to dance and chant alone

my jutting limbs all flesh and bone

And when I’m blessedly alone

where barn and orchard act as home

I talk to all my pets but

I sing to all these trees

I bow before my debt to them then

stretch up from my knees to reap their bounty

to count their rings

to ariate their humming boughs

and hear them singing back to me