The tea olive’s
new-season
leaves gather like
untamed hairs
atop spindly green legs.
Last year it was our
golden
newborn, planted
with such care that our
own
mortality might have
been just
beneath the silty
surface.
Now, it is as a child of
seven,
no more sweet fly away
curls,
cherub cheeks gone like
baby
teeth and baby ways,
leaving
transitory gaps of
ugliness.
Someday it will be in
its prime,
the child of seven grown
to twenty-nine,
beautiful
and healthy, strongest
in that period of
perfect
balance, of just the
right
number of years.
What more can a man
gracing fifty or his
woman
of forty-four know of
any
journey. Just plant,
nurture and wait.