Judith Wright speaks

THE FLAME TREE

How to live, I said, as the flame-tree lives?

To know what the flame-tree knows – to be

Prodigal of my life as that wild tree

And wear my passion so?

That lover’s knot of water and earth and sun,

That easy answer to the question baffling reason,

Branches out of my heart, this sudden season.

I know what I would know.

How shall I thank you, who teach me how to wait

In quietness for the hour to ask or give:

To take and in taking bestow, in bestowing live:

In the loss of myself, to find?

This is the flame-tree; look how gloriously

That careless blossom scatters, and more, and more.

What the earth takes of her, it will restore.

These are the thanks of lovers who share one mind.

JUDITH WRIGHT