Ode to Palm Tree
They are so skinny and tilted and giving
and unbroken. Tipsy nightclub curve,
tropical bones of our festive dirt. Thrashed
by storm. Under hurricane they whip and bow
and lose their hair: oh they are dreamy, swampy
things, giraffe of bark, Seussian wonder, plucked
on Easter Sunday and smeared on the foreheads
of believers. Uprooted for the staffs of Aggayú,
volcanic king, Changó’s father, and can you imagine
a palm tree as a walking stick held by a moody god
forging mountain paths, depositing coconuts like pearls?
Son del paraíso, un firmamento dorado.
Everywhere a show of Heaven.
The Questioning of the Palms
If we could be certain they were among
the trees of Eden—did sweat and tears exist?
Desert and swamp? Did they stun themselves
to the ground and wait to reach the rising soil?
If they once brushed against the swelling
rhododendron, trembling ferns and figs, coughing
in gentle secret through the shuddering blush,
fungi crackling at the wood, a little sin
at the crownshaft, a murmuring of the frond.
And for the first time, it felt thirst, a premonition
of rain. Las palmas preciosas practicing
against an idea of a flood, shedding water away
with feathery leaves copied from angels
after watching these men drying their feathers
in the river, and the plants didn’t want to die,
thinking they might know what death means.
So they stooped out of fear and learned the feeling.
Shifted to corners, out of sight from the naked
inhabitants of the undying gardens, the sinful degrees
of their falling shoulders and already paradise
was starting to dirty itself, birth of the tropics,
before the gnarled tree first grew the apple.
Victoria María Castells is a Cuban American writer and middle-school English teacher from Miami, Florida. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from McNeese University and a B.A. in English from Duke University. Her first collection of poetry, The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, was published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Notre Dame Review, The Journal, and other literary magazines.