Norfolk Island Pine is a part of a whole suite of poems dedicated to the genus Araucaria (what kind of a nerd IS this guy?!)
Airtone’s seachange seemed appropriate…







Norfolk Island Pine
Araucaria heterophylla


in the Pacific your point of origin
a speck of pollen

but a diaspora delivered you
to every beach resort

your trunk adolescent slim-muscled,
smoothskinned with occasional
acne and zits

your substitute leaves
scimitars
of baby claws,
stockwhips for the kiddies.

there’s surfwax oozing from your pores
yet the swell keeps slipping away
from your toes

You reach for the sky
you organic pyramid
and I’ll sit in your shade eating
a pine-lime Splice, our backs together, staring out towards the horizon.


(from the suite Araucarias of Gondwana (Tree Dinosaurs) in tropeland

by rob walker, Five Islands Press, 2015.)