Naked trees
Almost two centuries ago
I wrote you a postcard on the leaf
of a muttonbird tree
and gave it to the mailbag.
Carrying my words within the natural
borders of its shape, the leaf travelled miles
in a sack of words drawn by horses
writing our modest history together.
It was never intended for delivery
to the future, this place no one knew
they were writing. Nature date-stamped
is our nature, to everything
its in-built expiration, yet some things
preserved long beyond their natural term
are still served up as fresh — nostalgia
for a past we mostly wrote blocks our nose
to the toxins in the ancient tins we keep on opening.
The me of now would write to you on leaves again
were it not for the inconvenience that trees
need them more urgently, and to strip them
is to stuff my own mouth full of decadent matter
when for everyone and I it is far more convenient
to keep breathing and anyway only dying emperors
these days still dress themselves in leaves.
Chris Price is a poet and essayist whose most recent book is The Lobster’s Tale (Massey University Press, 2021). She convenes the Poetry and Creative Nonfiction MA workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters.
This poem was prompted by a postcard written on the back of a leaf, from the early twentieth century: