American life in poetry

I’m especially attracted to poems that describe places I might not otherwise visit, in the manner of good travel writing. I’m a dedicated stay-at-home and much prefer to read something fascinating about a place than visit it myself.

Here the Hawaiian poet Joseph Stanton describes a tree that few of us have seen but all of us have eaten from.

Banana Trees

They are tall herbs, really, not trees,

though they can shoot up thirty feet

if all goes well for them. Cut in cross

section they look like gigantic onions,

multi-layered mysteries with ghostly hearts.

Their leaves are made to be broken by the wind,

if wind there be, but the crosswise tears

they are built to expect do them no harm.

Around the steady staff of the leafstalk

the broken fronds flap in the breeze

like brief forgotten flags, but these

tattered, green, photosynthetic machines

know how to grasp with their broken fingers

the gold coins of light that give open air

its shine. In hot, dry weather the fingers

fold down to touch on each side –

a kind of prayer to clasp what damp they can

against the too much light.