Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Everygreen

Everygreen

The stick and pink petals and
fallen needles that rain can’t reach

and owl that drops from a branch
and drifts, like a hang glider

within his own body. All of these
are the tree. Plus the hardwood

flooring in your old apartment
that you gouged with a nail

from the base of your old dresser.
And the evergreen seedling

you carried home from school
on Earth Day, damp paper towel

cupping its roots like a diaper.
You planted it near the other

evergreens, already full-grown,
taller than the houses on the block.

In your mind, each one is the baby
you held, is the sail of a pirate

ship, with a rotating sprinkler
tied on with rope for the wheel.

The tree is what grows beside
the house you lived in until you

were twelve. It has not known the
top of your head for decades.

9 comments

  1. Hannah, the visuals in this one are my favorite ever. I love.

    I think about this too, the souls of trees and how fractured they must feel. I wrote a narrative a very long time ago about the termite trails in old planks in very old homes. This reminded me of that...must try and dig it out somewhere.

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  2. Hannah, the visuals in this one are my favorite ever. I love.

    I think about this too, the souls of trees and how fractured they must feel. I wrote a narrative a very long time ago about the termite trails in old planks in very old homes. This reminded me of that...must try and dig it out somewhere.

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  3. Hi Hannah,
    I love this poem. It makes me think of the trees I grew up with, and the tree in the schoolyard, and the hardwood floors or cabinets in apartments I've lived in, and every tree I've walked beneath, or ever held, or wanted to hold in the cup of my hands.

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  4. ...Yes, thank goodness, there is more! Beautiful!

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  5. I wrote a piece not too long ago about a tree that sits where my families home once stood, now a parking lot. It spoke to my memories of Mamasita and our coming from Mexico as it still spralls vibrantly. It's who I visit when I wish to drive around my neighborhood for nostalgia sake.

    Trees are my favorite non-ambling manifestations of Life, large, strong and always reaching for the heavens. We must respect them if we, the human race, are to survive.

    Wonderful piece with reflective and memorable visuals, Hannah.

    Gracias!

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  6. So beautiful. Wow.
    Trees . . . I was just thinking of Binsey Poplars this morning, a poem that makes me want to cry.

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  7. Some wonderful images in this poem, which is also both thought-provoking and moving, when we consider what our homes are made of, how we abandon them without ever quite forgetting them, especially when we grow up in a single place and then go away.

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  8. I love all the associations and the word/idea "everygreen." I was looking at pix of evergreens yesterday trying to identify a certain species....

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  9. "It has not known the
    top of your head for decades."

    Heartbreaking.

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