The Kauri Tree
Of course you’re fourteen years older
since the last time I saw you.
Your magnificent girth - dizzy height.
From your smallest roots (the size of a man’s thigh)
to your first branches that bees nested in -
your honey would have been the sweetest.
A man could build a house from this tree
my uncle told me. I believed him -
in fact, you could have built more.
I flew over you once in a helicopter,
you looked pathetically small,
but a fool was I in your towering shadow
thinking you were so.
Written: 1987
———
Kauri trees are the biggest (in volume) tree
in New Zealand standing up to 50m tall.
This particular Kauri tree was on my mate’s
father’s farm which I would visit as a kid.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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