Poems

A Note

By Peter Halstead

Each small bract or spore
That flares so unassumingly
From fronds is a metaphor
For stalk and stem, for tree

And root, for soil and land
And earth and sun, a world
Extracted backwards, fanned
Like petals tightly swirled

Around a stalk, like semaphores
Uncurled from rigging lines,
Whose outer rhythm soars
As the band inside unwinds,

As my words, stipules on a node
Ripped from larger roots,
Should by rights explode
Into a sky of shoots.

April 14th, 2008, Lanikai