Regarding bamboo

each glass-shard leaf
redefines green
set at no other angle
than the right one.

The stabbing points echo bamboo spears.
I keep it confined,
pot-bound.
I’ve seen how it invades;
takes over whole backyards
even makes it inside
onto wallpaper
the pattern of the drapes,
insinuates itself as furniture,
picture frames,
handles for handbags.

(copies of which are sold for a tenth the price
in the markets of Hong Kong.)

Bamboo, in China, is serious business.
It grows to a height of 200 metres
or more
in elaborate criss-cross frameworks
inhabited by agile building workers,
covered up with cloth.
And when their work is done,
the bamboo falls away,
clattering to the street,
revealing itself
a womb
a cocoon
for a 21st century skyscraper

Pandas chow down
on rare and unusual varieties
as if there were no tomorrow
and there probably isn’t
for them.

It grow to a fractal blueprint
pointing leaf-arrows
east and west
at delicate angles
I can’t follow.

One hot day on Hong Kong island
I climbed down a narrow path
to the temple on the cliff.
Breathed incense;
bowed to foreign gods.
Water burbled from the spring
filled a bamboo tipper
and every 30 seconds
it chimed
struck wood on stone
emptied to the sea
and filled again.

I won’t go there again.
Hong Kong’s so far from Melbourne
where I wear black
don’t believe in spirits
and keep my bamboo in a pot
glazed blue as the deep ocean.