The Growing Gift

The Growing Gift

The Growing Gift

You’ve no idea, those proteas
you gave me – somehow scavenged bunch –
how those huge soft-furred goblet flowers,
are travelling with me, still.

There was a time I wouldn’t have thanked you
for such stubborn heads: hard-hearted,
stiffly-ranged, supremely practical,
the nationalists’ tough bloom –

I hated them, so vulgarly
indigenous. Now, roses, snowdrops,
hollyhocks, yes, these were flowers
one could call beautiful,

would plant and nurture, even twist
into your hair. These are too huge
and dense for that. What use are they –
unscented, heavy, blunt?

You filled my arms with them, that night,
the upstairs restaurant.  You made
the waitress light a fire against
the Cape’s mild winter,

warm and beautiful enough for me,
the wrong end of my holiday
back home.  But I was glad of it,
light leaping to our table,

how the fire kept answering your gift,
its milder glow – still flames propped
in a silver bucket – as we laughed,
speaking in Afrikaans

and English, hardly thinking which
was which. Past midnight, then,
my B & B’s prim basin swelled,
a southern coronation,

an astonishment. In daylight
I leaned over them, using – your word –
aandagtigheid, attentiveness;
slowly absorbing

all that I had missed, their delicate
geometries. The untranslated
captures it: at once both felted,
soft, yet also guttural:

the palate tongued, first slowly, then
a final snap, and in-between
a purring, gently, in the throat.
The woody stems, those rose-

tipped assegais, the pale cream
inner cone, with fronds as tender
as lambs’ eyelashes. I stood there,
on the chilly, gleaming

tiles, stroking the hearts of flowers.
I couldn’t bring them back with me;
even such silent aliens
are dangerous. I chose

to split them – single sticks holding
their own exploding heads –  left them
with loved ones, who, familiar,
might also feel contempt.

But I’m a convert now. Treasure
my photograph, a clumsy shot
that lops me at the knees, but shows
what matters: mammoth blooms


cupped in my arms. The elbow crooked,
as when I’m pictured cradling
my godchild niece; the weight about
the same. So are we anchored,

always, even from afar. So,
in the night, scented with roses here,
I feel the tug – those ancient stems,
breathing a fragrant sap,
come reaching down my spine.