Tecomanthe Vine

By Laurie Trott

The smell, when it comes,
latex,
driving a Holden panel van ride back to youth
an oyster of a world out-shucked
by jagged, razor pearl shell the old ways and days slip into a past
as we grow grey and grave
but what of those middle years tinged
pink with fecund Tecomanthe blossom bunches of fluted-mouth glorious blooms
of fleeting native beauty and barely latex scent
snaking through volcanic basalt, rich and red, colouring
the garden of the farmhouse on the hill and the view from the salvaged Silky Oak casements
all the way to Bartle Frere and Bellenden Ker
commanding a sea of waving wind-caressed, tall seeded grass
for bucket-raised beasts grazing their way from paddock to plate ennui provoking whimsy, seducing grass into a field of wheat
in a flat, beckoning West, an exotic seeming escape
from the loveliness and betrayal of upthrust, rainforest clad
hills; of that other time, that other place. How that mischievous spirit the past slips through closed doors! demanding presence once again in before
where plans and promise were forged and sunk
by a die cast back in the misguided ways and days of youth cut short. Latex and lurex and the spurned burnished linoleum
and wanting to please! I leave that past
burn their images on freedom’s altar,
refuse the guilty thought: maybe
I should have offered them the pix? No. Toss the bruised bloom, give it back to the Earth
thank the Tecomanthe at Cairns Botanic
for a moment of pause, and claws scratching on
the blackboard of the past where all is writ large
and ready to be forgot. Again.

This poem was created during a workshop with New Shoots: Cairns Botanic Gardens