My Indigenous Garden Poem by Diana van den Berg

You, my morning forest,
my early morning forest,
my dew-awakened, early morning forest;
You with your dark shapes softening into gold;
You, who seat your little daybreak choristers
whose tiny lungs inflate with leaf-clean dawn
and scent of wet-earth green,
and explode into harmonising joy,
to herald the unfurling day and
greet those who will listen, and the sun;
You with your pranks,
A flutter of water on my head,
No, not a bird,
but had it been, who cares?
Perhaps you know what shampoos and hairdryers do,
and short hair dries so quickly too;
You with your damp, soft-cushioned, morning carpet
of mellowed leaves on forest grass,
Shiver-cold under my naked feet,
You, my early morning forest, are my tremulous inspiration.

You, my day-time forest,
With your honeyed acacia breath,
You with your bustling avian Hillbrow
whose verdant skyscrapers quiver with life…
LBJ’s and flashes of colour
dart from one inviting delicatessen to another
with traffic sounds of chatter-chirrups and
liquid arias;

You with your surprises -
The sometimes mid-morning picnics,
especially when the pigeonwoods are fruiting,
of a bounding troop of monkeys
who find the time to play as well as feed;

If I keep still, they regard me
as one of them,
deformed and stretched and strangely inept at movement and communication,
but one of them,
though the alpha male watches me
the way an alpha male will do
when the smallest ones
play Dare-To-Swing-Too-Close-To-This-Grandmother-Of-All-Monkeys,
then leap back to their comfort zone and on to other games…
then comes the silent signal, and,
with a whoosh of flying goodbye branches,
they all depart,
thundering over the roof;
You, my daytime forest with your carpet crisp,
where hadedahs delve
almost
at my feet;
Then, once a mongoose …..slender with black-tipped tail …
I held my breath as this elegant creature of the night
stood motionlessly watching me in dappled daylight
without apparent fear.
I held my breath and every muscle
for one forever minute
until his eye and he flowed back into the undergrowth…
You with your sun-splashed butterflies
who tease the fractious light and shadows
that play games with your multitudinous nuances of green;
You with your red and yellow blossoms into orange;
You, my daytime forest, are my blazing optimism.

But you, my night forest,
You, with your ghostly, green-white-wooded fever trees,
their graceful arms spread wide,
lure me from your fringe
into your dark-barked depths;
You, with your white night blossoms’ sweet, sweet fragrance,
You with your silent moments…
and your tiny night sounds,
You with your shelter from civilisation
and your leaf-patterned moon,
You are my DNA.

(August 1998)