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KALAMATA
by Israel Halpern
“Our sweet-silvered wet-nurse”-----Sophocles, on the Olive Tree
[5th Century Greece mandated a death sentence for anyone found
to have killed an olive tree.]
Olive trees require 15 years before they can produce a full tree of olive fruit.
Ovate points of green foliage clustered on each argent branch,
buds become fruit for their saline soak.
Brachiate networks, fingered in crowns,
rough bark crenellated trunk, noble weed
thickening each decade after
not producing berries for fifteen initial years.
Cared-for in the ways of water and fertilizer
fish heads buried at the root ball
powders from the shamans for the hearty shift.
Naiads dancing under Demeter’s flow,
moon shafts and Aegean winds with Kos rains.
Season after season of the Maypole reels.
Blood from the placenta and hymns from Crete.
Lovers hiding under the barren limbs copulate to Pan
for the crazed hope of olive harvest.
Then the burst of green nubbins,
hardened with resilient elasticity,
tough silvery sheen on each morning glint
when rainfall and dew moisten each fingered cup.
Blessed is the gift of the issue of these orchards;
Oil for the kitchen, for the salad, for the lamp
for the hope of Ajax of Iliad
Odysseus of the Odyssey
fuel for the shrine to Zeus and Hera.
Olive in the embrace of family
round with the answer to an unasked question.