Olive Tree (Mystery)

Olive Tree (Mystery)

_Olive Tree Mystery

life

He said “shut up a minute,
You’re always talking”
Funny, I could say the same for him,
But didn’t, laughing.

“Look around,” he said
“At the mouths, hear the accents”
Bob Marley stretched out on the wall
The patrons, guy in Iron Maiden, the bar staff.

“Hear the music, look at the people,
take it all in, you muppet.
You’re in Brick Lane, London, UK”
On the Verge of something …

Across the street through a flat window
Grew a thing, and he said:
“It’s an olive tree” for which
I’ll never know if he was joking.

He said “stop, look around, it’s Covent Garden now
bloody shops,” he complained.
I was excited, thought he was about to
Get me to contemplate stillness again.

When I walked through my door
I had arrived home, alone
And there was no one there to
Shut me up, I was still.

“Look at the sofa, the TV and this scene
nothing’s changed,” I freaked
except for maybe me
and the thing planted inside this body.

On the verge of growing into something …

She said: “Make sure it’s what you want to do
Not what you think you should do.”

I had gone back next day in the day light of Brick Lane
The olive tree was gone from the flat, did I tell you?

Easy come, easy go
Nothing meant a thing
So I did what I should do
And kyboshed the seed.

In the silence and the stillness
I struggled to find it pretty
There is no seed, no tree
No olive branch to extend to him.

“Stop a second,” I said to me
“See your health, hear your energy
18 months, plus 9 gone, you’re free
— of this insanity.”

And with that, I laughed
And did what he had said,
I shut up, I shut him out
I shut off, and looked around …

And as wrong as he was
For a girl like me
He sure got it right
In showing me the sweet poetry …

of life.

© Sylvie Hill 2013

BL BL

Note: As I completed this poem and went to look for the photos of the ‘before’/night and ‘after’/day in Brick Lane, I realized I had the windows mixed up. The day-time vacant window where I had thought the tree was removed, was actually the flat NEXT DOOR. This means that the olive tree in the flat from the night before was, infact, intact, and still there! That’s the Hunky Dory flat because the tree is in the window about that shop. There never had been anything growing next door. This means that whatever grew before, remains Hunky Dory; and in the non-Hunky Dory flat emptiness, there had never been a seed fertilized, blossoming, so no loss really. Yeah, that’s what I’ll say to me. That’s what I’ll have me believe.