Experience the Local Flora
I call it my tree because I’ve spent more time with it than anyone around here. Closer for longer. Seen it through all it’s seasons. Gazed at it, through it. I think it watches me too; even spies — a million eyes of un-born buds clustered into bunches — waiting to ambush?
Wikipedia tells me that the fruit of the bottle brush tree won’t come out until the plant that carries them dies (I’m not sure I understand). Another website informs me that the flower isn’t made of petals but bunches of stamen — the male reproductive organ, they call it — which fits. The flower plumage is stiff and, on my tree, pink. Like most pricks, to touch lit ook like it would hurt me but is actually, if not delicate, quite soft and even pleasant to the touch. Birds love it. Bees love it. The earth rejoices in its spew (the biological term is pollen).
In June, I wrote Myrtle a poem:
the bees airport
the red bloom
of my window tree
maybe they live
to tread the breeze
maybe they live
to swarm the hive
maybe they live
to serve the queen
maybe they live
to fend for each other,
maybe they
fend for the blossom
maybe they live
to die in the wind
Myrtle is, really, everyone’s tree.
She’s the neighbors tree. They dump they’re old things under Myrtle’s shade, as though to protect or emphasize them. Oh you like this beautiful tree? Well check out the (useless) treasures scattered (littered!) at its feet! Myrtle knows justice. Practices it every time some Bay area rube totters down the sidewalk with their face in their phones not watching their step. As an avid AFHV (Americas Funniest Home Video) fan who grew-up on the level sidewalks of the LA suburbs, the kick I get from the pratfalls of every urban scrub biting it on Myrtles gnarled root-knuckles induces a lofty laugh of the lowest form of physical humor from me. That’s Myrtle getting her’s And pick your shit up while you’re down there.
It’s the cats tree. When we used to play chase, Trish (aka Trisherish, Risheroo, Princess, Gutter Queen) would scurry up its fleshy bark, high as the sagging phone lines, to prove the superiority of her species, waiting for us to give up and plant our asses on the sad cement stair stoop in front of our apartment until we called her down and rewarded her with heavy pets. Now the littler one, Bridget (aka Scorpion, Scorpio, Gremlin, Gremolina), sits at it’s base watching Trish hunt birds (I know, I know; woe the songbirds murdered by invasive felines. But we keep having humans and they seem far more destructive).
Bridget is a runt and though she’s an outdoor cat, she’s timid and cautious of her limits. She watches Trish and wonders when her own legs will be strong enough, her own claws sharp enough to scale that trunk and put her instincts to work. Much as a imagine how a hormonal teenager. For now, Bridget stalks tall grass and dead leaves, placing them, OCD-like, before her food dish each night before she eats like an offering to the gods of plenty .
It’s Babe’s tree. The best mornings drag. The mind raises up before the eyelids. A slow bloom to awareness. Sunlight seeps under the hem of the curtains, slips over the sheets, melting the ice of subconscious metaphor off the Everest of her affections: Babe (he requires about 10 hours of sleep to my five). When I open the black-out blinds the shade from bottle brush tree in the window is Babe’s half-mast, a remembrance of his hero dreams: the gills he grew, the arms that flew, the apocalypse he survived in the night. Myrtle makes the rays shy, courteous; the day peeks through her full tough leaves as gently and encouragingly as the scent of fresh of coffee brewing in the next room. Myrtle is in no hurry, not going anywhere. Why don’t we hang out a little longer, Myrtle suggests, me in my planter bed, you in your people bed. I bring Babe coffee in his blue enamel camping mug and tuck in beside him with my ceramic lollipop-flower mug. The three of us — Myrtle, Babe and me — consider each other as long as we can. There is compassion in the quiet, the un-sudden movement.
