Friday, June 7, 2013

Trembling Aspen

Populus tremuloides = Peuplier faux Tremble by Pierre-Joseph Redoubté, image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


Peuplier Faux-Tremble

Here’s something cool, quite right:
the French say, ‘Tremble.’ Same
as ‘aspen.’  (English name.)
This poem I now write
is just to shed some light
on tremble/aspen’s fame.

This aspen is unique.
A different kind of tree:
it clones itself.  But see,
although its bark is sleek
it has a strange physique
and trembles where winds be.

I think this narration
got lost in translation.

###

Notes:  The form is HexSonnetta, inspired by Poetic Bloomings' In-form Poet form of the week.  Today, Khara House's Thirty by Thirty Challenge's prompt is 'tremble.' 

I thought I remembered that this word meant something different in French, so I looked it up and to my delight, discovered 'tremble' in French means 'aspen' in English.  However, the interesting thing is that, as the title of the poem points out, there is a real tree called the trembling aspen (or, in French, the peuplier faux-tremble.)  Since I love the humor of getting lost in translation, I decided to go with it, although I'd be willing to guess that this may not have been the original intention of the prompt.

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