The Old Feijoa Trees

The Old Feijoa Trees

For my sister Randa, and my old friend Christchurch, in these times of distance.

“’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 feijoa fruit
And raise a spoon for me.

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