Camellia

With cotton flowers
and fresias alight,
I wished for you to join us
in mulled wine
and steeping stories -
rich tales and chatterbox
grains of paradise time
in knowing friendship so long.

I wished for you to come home
to plant the tree I bought...
from a shop at the base of those emerald hills,
with wandering deer nigh and their lovely wild eyes looking upwards.

That tree
that lady of the camellia
she remembers
always,
she knows about great flight
and she's no wooden mob
no muffled wet leaves
or crowded mass of tangled life,
no thick silent arms,
no tightening branches around necks.

I wished for you to feel
her tea flower
life's sweet seasoning
yet blazing fierce luminous light
that of woman
of me
of every concentric wedding band
married to rights
overlying the overlapping
struggle
to find
perfect symmetry
in peace
in parity.