BONZAI!!!

Penetrating deep into a sideshow featuring arboreal dwarves, 

the Flaneur risks charges of obsession and compulsion as he reviews his afternoon.

1.

Traveling hopefully

Where am I off to today?

 The extensive gardens in Lakeside Park

Large monarch butterflies loll languidly,

On a wistful note some trees turn to rust

In particular to stylized realm of a Bonzai arboretum

Beginning with a conversation between stones,

This is a Bonzai

In blossom the first week of January

I have so much affection 

I want to pet them like a dog

Like a real tree-cuddler

Illusions of scale,

Californian trees have range

An adorable quartet,

From a great redwood to a miniscule bijou

Like driftwood come back to life

This tree had a discernible personality,

A small Ent from Middle Earth

None of the distortions of dwarfism,

A perfect miniature tree, 

In the garden of Doctor Praetorius

A driftwood marlin becomes a tree form

In a display of curiosities

A tree only a mother could love,

Waving like a fairy-tale mouse

Classic form

Inhibition of growth combined 

With the zen of sculptural abstraction

A crusty docent told me that the Kamikaze pilots

Actually shouted a different phase than Bonzai!

The grostesque is the eye of the beholder

Roots cling to some porous rock,

Down to the nuts and bolts of it

2.

Into the outer garden

I spent contented hour on yon bench

Basking in the sunny but still cool weather

Bird of Paradise

Look at the flower near the center,

A tiny hummingbird approaches it

He takes a drink from it,
"little bee bird, love you"
wrote Philip Whalen

Saint Francis is often with me

Whenever I'm out of doors

Sometimes so is this strange little girl

She was so enraptured by the birds and the flowers

That she wandered here from Fairyland

The bus left without her and she never went home

She became a feral flower child

Sleeping in tree trunks and sheds

Slipping into numerous picnics in the park

Today this statue is her only memory

3.

Interesting notes on the way out

I love these all year long

Hard to image the color correctly

A dragonard plinth

On my way out of the Park,

Areas of light and dark

A secret world inside the firmament of a tree

And in a thicket,

The first red buds of a new year

6 January 2015