The Old Feijoa Trees

The Old Feijoa Trees

’Twas how my love started
Atop those twinned feijoa trees.
From azure sky
Onto my head,
Felled by the nor’west breeze:
This little pouch
A dun green pod
Rotund about its waist —
I ate my fill of nect’rous flesh
With all unseemly haste.
I ate them here;
I ate them there;
I downed them by the carton.
I spent three days in quarantine
They couldn’t stop me fart’n.

~~~

I roamed the world,
The seven seas
For thirty years I wandered.
Far from those feijoa trees
This errant lad absconded.
The souks of old Morocco —
I saw the Pope in Rome:
And from his bridge in Avignon
I sent a letter home.
An aerogramme, in pea-green ink,
Addressed to my dear friend
Passing news, telling tales, and
I scribbled at the end:
“Dear Master, I
Through low and high
And middle navigated —
But never found a fruit like that
I quite so highly rated.”

So, dear friend, for old times’ sake,
If you should pass those trees
Harvest some fejoia fruit
And raise a spoon for me.

For my sister Randa, in these times of isolation.

From the well-thumbed pages of the Jolly Contrarian’s songbook