Etymology invites the imagination to a host of new places as the poet explores the rich possibilities of a botanical term
I gather now dry-leaf spathes
that boys spear-wave
and sword-cross, float
into flooded gutters
like dugout canoes.
I arrange them on the wall
in peacock array. Hollowed
scoops that were sheathes,
wombs for palm tree florescence,
cast-off husks, now you
are canoes that we women
paddle on the brown-green river
of consciousness. I layer
spathes into a ladder
that holds my spirit weight.
One green spade I take from
my deck of playing cards. I place
it in the centre of this altar.
A shield. A crude halo
for the goddess who granted me
time on Earth and a daughter.
The father told me when I was pregnant
that the child was all that mattered.
The baby was the corn-ear;
I was the husk that he would
chuck away. I gave birth, Saraswati.
I believed that I was not a husk.
Green seed, green heart.
Let my daughter receive your gifts
of music, poetry and a strong mind,
so that she, too, knows that no woman
is a husk to be tossed away,
a sword to be crossed,
a canoe to drift and drown
in any swollen gutter.
Spathes seems to bind together the various aspects of women’s creativity alongside the symbolism of political regeneration
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