Sweet & Sour Endurance
Small tough tree, rising yet again, surprising me, that will to live
You survive us inept and bungling humans; drought, cold, aphids, heat
Little lemon, tree with ancient heart, you flower now, you forgive
This is a Sicilian tercet and a poetic and climatic sort of homage to my Meyer lemon tree which was once a graceful and balanced 3-D sort of plant but now strives for renewed life in a lopsided yet still graceful fashion. The label in the large pot it lives in says "Lazarus" and the implications are obvious. The tercet is a three line poem with an A B A rhymed ending pattern and iambic pentameter rhythm ~/~/~/. There are no set number of syllables per line.
If I can keep it protected from a killing frost inside the greenhouse and give it lots of light and enough air circulation, it will be grateful and do what it is doing right now, flowering and growing many healthy leaves. It also appreciates seaweed spray and as with all potted plants, enough nutrients and water to keep it thriving, not merely surviving. It is a plant with much to teach me. Ditto its neighbour, an avocado which somehow survived the winter outdoors under a black tarp and which Jeff spotted and rescued when he was transferring the compost (under the black tarp for many months) from one of the old wooden bins to his newly built barrel composting unit, a gift from the sea which he cleverly rejigged to become a thing of beauty that the folks at Lee Valley would endorse!
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