Tree Pantoum Revised comic poem number 367 by Angela Lansbury

  In Singapore I went to a Toastmasters club where a speaker who is bilingual in English and Malay told us about the Malay form of poetry, the pantoum. Afterwards I looked it up online. In Wikipedia and other places.

 I looked in my own poetry book, Poetry Workshop and discovered I had listed the form in the appendix where I gave the structures of sonnets, haikus, pantoums etc.

 Later I discovered that I had actually written a pantoum. However, here's my latest version, based on the English oak tree.

A Tall Tree  a pantoum by Angela Lansbury

A small shy seed grew a flower

Small acorns grow to tall oak trees

Over time the hidden bower

Is the tower all our street sees

 

A little acorn grew a tree

Higher and higher, never timed

A place where squirrels built their nests

Big boys with ladders and ropes climbed

 

Higher and higher never timed

A nest for birds, a lure for cats

Big boys with ladders and ropes climbed

Rooks, parakeets, owls, maybe bats

 

A nest for birds, a lure for cats

Until one day a giant storm

Rooks, parakeets, owls, maybe bats 

Scattered all to earth fearing harm

 

Until one day a giant storm

Struck down the old oak tree's bower

Scattered all to earth fearing harm

Each small seed grew a new flower.

The swing swung round, the hammock tipped

The climber fell and broke a bone

When I see trees I have one thought

That's don't climb, leave trees alone.

Climbers all risk broken bones

On this subject I could write tomes

Yes, please, climbers, leave trees alone

Let Mum and I sit safe at home.

-ends-

This was originally wirtten as a classic variation on the theme of small acorns growing into tall oak trees, and small seeds growing into flowers. On revising, I lost the pantoum effect, but gained a humorous cuationary verse.

The tall oak tree is in the garden of our neighbours the Serby family in Hatch End, London, England. 

When they were children, Paul Serby used to climb regularly. Occasionally unbeknown to me, my son would join in, alhough I had told him not to. My son assured me that nobody ever had an accident. Years later I heard they gave up climbing after an accident.

The last line means I and my neighbour, whose garden has the tree, sit safe because we are not climbing and feel safer and more content if our children don't climb.

I have a sample pantoum and the rhyming scheme in my book  POETRY WORKSHOP which you can buy from Lulu or Amazon.

Copyright Angela Lansbury. 2024, January

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