I just finished an online poetry workshop with Georgia Heard and Ralph Fletcher, both of whom I took writing classes with while a doctoral student at Teachers College Columbia University. On the workshop’s last night, Ralph showed us the below photo that he took of a famous tree in New Zealand. We used it as a prompt to write our final poem for the course. You’ll see what I came up with below the photograph. It was a fun experience to write poetry while gazing at a picture.
That Tree
I stare at that lovely (lonely? Why can’t I
read my own writing anymore?)
tree standing
by itself in a lake in
far-off New Zealand,
and
it makes me think of aspiration pneumonia, as
I stand here in my home, worried about choking
on water and/or my own saliva. Will the water –
any water –
kill me?
I recall something
bizarre and stupid that
Donald Trump, the next ruler of our planet,
said: it’ll be good if, because of global warming,
the oceans rise, because that
means more people get
waterfront
property! *
How crazy. How
idiotic.
I look at the tree some
more and realize I’m projecting my
own feelings onto it.
Is it bending backward,
it’s left elbow about
to immerse itself in the
water? Or will it rise
above the approaching calamity, “straighten
up and fly right”?
And what about me
swimming? I used to
swim long-distance races in lakes,
rivers, and
oceans. But thanks to Parkinson’s
dysphasia, no more.
Where’s the joy in that?
If I work on myself a lot, could I swim again?
Could I ever swim out to that lovely
lonely tree?
photo by Ralph Fletcher
* It’s so stupid it doesn’t even belong in a footnote, but here are the exact words: Trump dismissed the threat of climate change to a crowd of supporters in Flint, Michigan, saying, “When I hear these people talking about the threat of global warming, that’s the global warming you have to worry about. Not that the oceans gonna rise in 400 years an eighth of an inch. And you’ll have more seafront property, right? If that happened.” The crowd roared to a cheer. “I said, isn’t that a good thing? If I have a bit more property, I have a little bit more ocean.”
