Mah-Bell  

I trilling called you 

for those who loved you  

did too.

Waspish girls  

nasal corrected: May 

bull! May bull! 

I lyrebird*-caught and echoed 

their sour sounds, learned to  

reserve affection  

for times we had to ourselves.

The nuns insisted on  

Mary 

BELLE. 

Ringing the beauty  

out of your name, somehow. 

Donging the second,  

as if some kind of curse, 

deeming your name too heathen,  

perhaps.  

Who can understand nuns?

You were a heathen, anyway. We both were.

They tried to Josephine me 

but my ears refused admittance 

and 'suitable'  

punishment made my body deaf. 

I learned to filter pain, early.

Mabel. 

Mah-Bell. 

Moj prijatelj - My friend. 

You left me as they all did, 

back then.

I visited Saint Charles, my dear. 

Yesterday.  

Our tree lives, still. 

Our Magic Faraway escape. 

We carved our names  

before you left. I could not climb 

to check in heels and skirt. 

Had the years buried us  

in shifting sand?

I gouged to reach the heartwood, 

back then 

drove in my stolen blade*, 

dragon-boat-aggressive*.  

You were less enthused. You already  

knew.

I see the tree in mind's eye, 

glowing with a secret luminescence, 

alive as the Weirwood tree* is alive 

and knowing, 

haka-leaves* wet-shining with regret.

No degree of defiance or rage 

did change that day.

You left.

I wept.

*The lyrebird is a consummate mimic and of course, lyre is a pun and a symbol. 

*pocketknife I 'found', probably my father's. 

*if you've ever seen dragon boat racing the paddles, you couldn't call them oars are driven into the water, lunged in. Maoris 'paddle' in a similar fashion. 

* Weirwoods have red sap, which leak out of the deep cuts in the trunk made for the eyes of the faces - giving the appearance that they are weeping tears of blood. 'Game of Thrones'. 

*haka-leaves - A haka (plural is the same as singular: haka) is a traditional ancestral war cry, dance or challenge from the M?ori people of New Zealand. I am using it to describe the tongue-shaped leaves for the Maori warriors end the haka with a ferociously protruded tongue of defiance. At least that's my interpretation.