Everyday Canvas

A Tree's Lament

Prompt: Trees can live for a particularly long time, even longer than humans. Describe what a tree might think upon watching a human grow up all the way from infancy to old age.

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Abide with me, as you pass by, while I cry, after I’ve seen that damn Jenny Green change from tiny tot to brat, to young vixen, then to this old hag with the crooked hat. Through all that, without throwing a glance, perchance to my whereabouts, now, she has asked the tree man to cut me down, so they can dig for a pool, and wouldn’t it be cool to sip iced tea with her bridge club smarties at pool parties…without any regard to birds’ nests’ and me, or as a guard, when I took her son in my arms away from all harm and charmed him with tales my leaves spun when a wind gust passed through. I feel betrayed and dismayed, with my fate sealed and tossed aside, and there’s no place to hide, except when she steps close to me, I plan to drop a branch on her head without strife and gain a chance to life. If it’s her or me, this is gotta be.


So I answer the prompt with a silly on–the-spot prose-poem today, but since April is poetry month, I feel okay about it. One of our poetry prompts coming up on April 21 in "Dew Drop Inn"  is “a snippet of overheard talk.” In preparation for it, this afternoon when we went out, I started to write down the snippets of conversations that I heard. I found most of them to be highly inspirational, and it occurred to me to make a book of several poems from those snippets, which will take a while of course. I just hope this won’t be one of those hare-brained ideas that occur to me, in which I lose interest and don’t follow through.