• 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
• 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
