Today's Picture to Ponder Photos
July Sky and Clouds at Sunrise in Delray Beach, FL
Self-Reflecting Queries
Yours to create this issue. The lower photo offers the possibility of writing your thoughts directly on it. See "Photo/Writing" under water on June 5, 2006 post on my PicturePondering Blog.
BANANA TREES
The following was forwarded to me by a Picture to Ponder subscriber who owns a copy of BANANA SKY DVD and has given a couple as gifts to people healing from illnesses. Having experienced the Banana Tree and leaves and their cycle through the DVD, she could particularly relate to the beautiful poem below. To download the poem from the web and find out more about the publication, click on:
American Life in Poetry: Column 119 by TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I'm especially attracted to poems that describe places I might not otherwise visit, in the manner of good travel writing. I'm a dedicated stay-at-home and much prefer to read something fascinating about a place than visit it myself. Here the Hawaii poet, Joseph Stanton, describes a tree that few of us have seen but all of us have eaten from.
Banana Trees
They are tall herbs, really, not trees,
though they can shoot up thirty feet
if all goes well for them. Cut in cross
section they look like gigantic onions,
multi-layered mysteries with ghostly hearts.
Their leaves are made to be broken by the wind,
if wind there be, but the crosswise tears
they are built to expect do them no harm.
Around the steady staff of the leafstalk
the broken fronds flap in the breeze
like brief forgotten flags, but these
tattered, green, photosynthetic machines
know how to grasp with their broken fingers
the gold coins of light that give open air
its shine. In hot, dry weather the fingers
fold down to touch on each side—
a kind of prayer to clasp what damp they can
against the too much light.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by Joseph Stanton. Reprinted from "A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban O'ahu," Time Being Books, 2006, with permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. (back to top)
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