Erik the Green

Erikshuis. An inheritance,

weighed out in banana leaves and bark.

The mad offspring of one man’s dream. 

A funeral bequest: a bouquet of paintings,

the paddled folds of linen curtains,

home-spun, hard won.

And what about the neighbours?

Can you measure love in churches?

In the gradient of a single block of

Marble? You talk about inheritance –

this garden is an inheritance of winter-dreams,

of passion flowers and rhododendrons –

it is an inheritance of leaves.

So what about the botanics of time?

The biology of age?

The way some people grow stronger

And more beautiful with years like trees?

What about the angelica or the hellebores?

Forever green – full of hope for Swedish summers.

There is hardship in this shuttling

Between sun and ice and rain.

But to love through it all and create,

Create an inheritance,

Plastered and weighed

in baking trays and the tender husbandry

Of flower and leaf?

Once-silent valley,

Even the paper boy adored you.

You were one man’s dream.

A labour and a vision of love:

To grow bananas: sexy, yellow, strange,

in a land of searing brightness

and enduring cold.

Erik, not Red Erik

but Erik the Green.