Baobab Girl
poems by Nic Sebastian
Smashwords Edition
Cover Art: S.E. Goslin
Copyright 2011 Nic Sebastian
Published by Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks
CONTENTS
what happened to Cousin Harriet
This e-book is a companion to the original online text/audio publication of baobab girl.
baobab girl
inside the baobab
lives a dark slender girl
dressed in drifting
moon-cloth who carries
a luminous bone dagger
upon which she has carved
many names
exquisitely
at her belt a bag of duiker skin
swells with the pulsing
prayers she has stolen
and kept
singing high
she rides as she pleases
upon the great winds
and through the light
she haunts the canopy
of the baobab tree
and at night bends
over your fevered
sleep to whisper:
ausculta, fili! I am
that to which nothing
may be preferred
her eyes are dark gold
as wild bee honey
and when she moves
little blood-beads fall
in scalding rows
from her prayer bag
and settle steaming
on the path behind her
under the yew
the night is charcoal and silver
under the yew at the crossroads
where two people meet
she is elegant like dusk, with black hair
three silver eyes
and one hand
he is boastful like midnight and oh handsome
but one of his eyes is a dark bucket
and he has three hands
they barter
under the winter moon
under rasping yew branch
delicately she lends him
one eye, quietly she borrows
a hand
they waltz off together
linked organ to joyous
organ by floating threads
that sing
look closely now
ten years later
at the crossroads under the yew
those tender mutual grafts
(that silver eye, that beautiful hand)
have knotted into twisting
meat-hooks planted deep
within flesh
those delicate threads linking
eye to eye and hand
to hand have thickened like scars
into wrenching
rawhide rope, it is
all bright blood and deep bruise
under the yew tonight
the mangrove
how to withstand levels of salt
that would lay most trees flat
how to breathe
in airless mud
these are the twin dilemmas
of the mangrove which is
the sea tree and sentinel
of the coast
the mangrove seals off its roots
from poisonous salt it arches up
out of mud to avoid
suffocation
mother
you dark beautiful
lady you remind me
of the mangrove
Emma obeys her father
1.
my name is Yggdrasil
nine worlds grow from me
like fruit
runes hang in my branches
the underworld
is my root
I am also the serpent
Nidhogg, gnawing
upon myself
draw water from the well, norn
pour it over me
that my branches may not rot
2.
Emma is fifteen this summer
she thinks the student Ivar
is beautiful
declaiming under the ash
with his shaggy hair
and river-wet skin
Ivar’s silver eyes
are moon-lure, his voice
honey of ash sap
there are rings and widening rings
in Emma’s rabbit eyes
her bare feet step forward, her hands
reach out
3.
Emma! her father’s bellow
sounds through the hedgerow
his ash cane thumps the ground
she is late
and Emma surprises her father
she runs at him from the meadow
like bolting prey, like Peter Rabbit
pelting home
the incense gatherers
in Salalah your sisters spread my jeans
and t-shirt on a wicker rack
with knobs of frankincense smoldering
on coals underneath
so I emanate frankincense
as we ride out from the ruins
at Sumharam to the territory
of the Bait Kathir who are
the incense gatherers of Dhofar
on stony high ground one burning
afternoon we find wiry trees scattered
across the white plateau
some growing
out of solid rock
gnarled and tranquil they resemble
olive or juniper and bear lightly
the weight of legend
of merchant magi and messiah
which you describe to me
quoting Ibn Battuta
and Avicenna with your voice
like the smell of frankincense
which is balsamic spicy
and slightly lemon
the Bait Kathir gatherers shave
strips of bark from the trunk
with square minqaf knives
the white resin they call luban
oozes out and hardens
into crystals which they scrape
off and collect in palm baskets
that your sisters may burn it on coals
to make white smoke
beneath my clothes
that I may emanate frankincense
riding with you from the ruins of Sumharam
to the hills above Salalah tending secretly
the burning coal
of my heart
what happened to Cousin Harriet
she pitched her tent
among the aspens
in spring
they shimmered
in hundreds
around her
she sat in their midst
as in the palm
of a many-fingered hand
all aspens are one tree
in May tall men emerged
from among the Douglas firs
and carried her away
when all was quiet again
the deer came
Alona
1.
I am three hundred years old
eighty feet tall, I am
large sprawling
and sinuously curved
my roots are messengers
luminous with question and
answer, my leaves absorb
innocence from the air
I remembered these things Friday
lying under the live oak
when I came home spinning
from the new girl Alona
who has a voice like leaves
in wind, drifting hair
like Spanish moss and a scent
yellow as oak flower in spring
2.
sit down says the teacher impatient
I am late to class again Monday
but now Alona's wood-brown eyes
are looking, they see the living reach
of my roof-high branches, the age
grooved in my silver bark
and colossal movement
in my roots
the olive farmer
we have an orchard in the sun
with six hundred olive trees
and an olive mill, our trees
are centuries old
we have named our trees, we walk
frowning among them
draw our fingers across singing
ridges of ancient olive bark
our skin watches for harvest time
with the moon; we shake
the olive fruit carefully from our trees
and carry it to the granite stones
of our mill and when we have ground
our year of olives into rich paste
and spread it on the straw mats
of our press, we watch it engender
a slow green-gold with sun inside it
the hiss of pepper, a thrumming
of butter and the taste
of tart grass and cold appled fruit
the forestry student
there is congress in the foothills
the high country in spring
stands open like temple doors
and speaks in clean ways
Douglas fir and Ponderosa
pine expound here
heart-sharp arguments
blue spruce and mountain hemlock
knife-scented claims
a girl alone walks the pine forest
her familiars at home
are mahogany and teak forest
banyan and jacaranda
in crisp noon she tells
their distant stories
feels the Colorado mountain rooted
beneath her feet and listens
to the strangers
these high copper columns mantled
with living bristle with
green-silver needle
call for deep listening
and hearing speech
a song of home rises
off the bright alpine meadow
and a wind-woman in bells
drifts through
she makes wheedling arguments in
wind-ridden voice but the girl
shakes her head
and walks on
naming each new tree
saluting it
with all the nerves in her hands
with all the meaning in her voice
polemic for spring
and there you are among
the lemon groves
of Srimongol, trailing through
the jackfruit trees
your hands cut
and bleeding from jagged
pineapple leaves
you don’t know how to handle
sit with me in the dawn, watch me
peel the pineapple, flavor it
with lemon and papaya, brew for you
a delicate tea
its scented steam will rise
before your face
calm like the Arakan hills
drowsing blue beyond the river
and together in sleep we will float
on a bamboo raft
over a green pool ringed
with betel palms and warbler song
listen well now
the children are laughing
in the lemon grove
Idrissa at home
so cool inside
the mango tree
soaring leaf dome
wired for jade rustle
rough bark knobs
sweet along his back
fugitive suns
burst through his eyelids
mango juice
runs off his fingers
the universe
sways with the breeze
the thorn tree
we are trekking north from Mweya
to Kikorongo across open savannah
through lion country
the Ruwenzoris rise high blue
before us and parched wind sways
the grasses of the plain
an old man sits under a thorn tree
sewing a rope of buffalo hide
with an acacia thorn
his rope stretches out miles
from him over the savannah
into the western horizon
suddenly crashing wing-roar
and a swarm of glittering bees
led by their queen
meet your new home, my bees!
the bees blanket the thorn tree
and the old man warmly
a maned lion charges
on rippled muscle and with great
bee-roar voice
he pounces on the old man
but the bees are swift, they enfold
the lion who falls
to earth from muscled midair
as tinkling white bone
while the old man yanks hard
on his rope of buffalo hide
and our feet through the earth
feel the peak Margherita
miles away in the high blue distance
ripped groaning from all her height
oh the sorrow of it and oh the pain
of waking
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors of the following poetry journals, in which several poems in this chapbook appeared in earlier forms:
Valparaiso Poetry Review (the olive farmer)
Eclectica (Emma obeys her father; the incense gatherers; under the yew; what happened to cousin Harriet )
Salt River Review (thorn tree; baobab girl)
MiPoesias (Alona)
Blue Fifth Review (Idrissa at home)
Escape Into Life (polemic for spring)
About the author
Nic Sebastian hails from Arlington, Virginia and travels widely. Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Anti-, MiPOesias, Salt River Review, Mannequin Envy, Avatar Review and elsewhere. Nic blogs at Very Like A Whale. She is the founder and voice behind the audio poetry journal Whale Sound and founder of Voice Alpha, a group blog dedicated to the discussion of anything related to reading poetry aloud for an audience.