This world looks at trees
and sees none 

How many trees have supported your paper?
Your ideas are full of tree dust.

How many trees have built up your home?
Your life is lived in tree matter.

Where are the protests for the voiceless?
Where do we sign up
to march for trees?

Because I treasure their silence 
I treasure the gentle leaves 
they are like wind chimes.

I pressure the silly doubts into gold
the tree is like glitter.

How hopeless can one lonely voice become
when the trees that surround her 
are thrown down like dirty cloths?

Do not wash your hands on trees
do not choke 

The tree
stands like a yogi
I sit at its roots

and become its silence 

 

The philosopher girl turns the page 
and pretends the story isn’t over 

The philosopher girl looks out upon 
a field of pollen and contradicts 
those who only see enough flowers 
for their bouquet

The philosopher girl carries her body 
like it is treasure 
The philosopher girl carries her body 
like nobody has ever told her 
it isn’t good enough 

The philosopher girl looks like a crowd 
and speaks with the cry of the many

The philosopher girl knows 
the planets must be depressed 
Circling the same path
each foot knows its place 
like the finger to warm clay
Knees orbiting jaw
teeth like headstones to a shattering voice 

The philosopher girl peeks 
under her own skirt to taste the blush 
a wet hand tries to return the blood 
a vulgar foreshadowing to womanhood 

The philosopher girl
lifts her shackles to prove 

One tree
was the tree I leaned upon 
while I had my first kiss 

One tree
knows that secret 
I trust trees more than people 

With these hands 
I build the soil around you like blankets 

With these roots
I entrust each pillowed seed in your spine 

With these hands
I force upon you union and temperance 

With these roots 
I curtsy on every stepping stone 

With these hands
I hold the sunshine to my tongue 

With these roots 
I gather the rain to my skirt 

With these hands 
I wish you prosperous tides 

With these roots
I curl your love into paperchain glories

With these hands 
I push you not light but warmth 

With these roots
I ask you to be mine 
 

Consider what flowers will flavor your soil
what honey bees will carry pieces of you

Where your great granddaughter will sit
and reply with glasses of poetry to water you
when you are finally sleeping

Consider which birds will want to rest unpon
the head of your bed and which butterflies
will wake you again with churned kisses

Do not overthink
Do not think about it on the drive home
Do not think about it when you are cooking 
or shopping the next day
Do not think about it when you bathe
in your happy memories
scrubbing off all the grime and worry 

Do not muddy the waters you wish to drink

Do not think about it when you are falling asleep 
let it go and go and go
its getting farther away
 
Flowers sit on your porch next morning
and you wish you remembered what they were for 


 

Long before you reach the sunflowers
long before the cement turns to dirt and potholes
long before the dry earth 
brings about her grounded suns

I don’t have the patience for you
but the sun is a star.

I ride the summer on dusty roadsides
drinking in your exhaust like ragweed pollen
you see me on the wood edges
too afraid to leave alone
too afraid to pick

You see me making 
once cultured fields my home
I am always the second place
hand-me-down worthy
middle child 
bottom class weed

But

Call me wreath donning brow
call me day stalk of the roadside 
call me bright melancholy 
call me hidden under brush
call me the fishing rod to the sunny children 

call me
that one dancer...
that makes the sunflowers
and buttercups

swoon 

 

With every step singing,
each note breathing you another 
illuminated page.

Meadows digging deeply into the music,
and all strands of grass clinging to 
each stroke of the clock and string.

Chiming under the whole slate of sky, 
a ringtone to the universe.

Sit all things down to your table
and give them equal tea. 

Keys stumbling, 
pushing through the crowd to be first. 

Lyrics holding more than 
just a gentle rhythm 
to guide all voices into their own
standing ovation. 
 

Small victories are victories 
but we have work to do.

The hate has grown and grown,
unruly, spiteful gardens 
made to strangle.

The weeds have slipped up under
our stockings and the burrs
are clinging to our knees
like tears cling to lashes.

Small victories are victories 
but we have work to do.

Our gloves are muddy
so we will use our hands.

Callouses splitting on palms
and bruises digging on fingertips.

Unearth the sleeping dahlia bulbs
and rescue them from the anger-caked plots.

Protect the quiet roots.

We may have won a battle
but there is work to do.

Small progress is progress
but it is not enough.

What is addicted to its own history
cannot move past its mistakes. 

We have work to do.
We have to start now. 

Vermont’s mountains are not triangles, 
kindergarten crayola markers.

Instead the deeply meditative masses,
landscapes of sleeping bodies,
are quiet enough for each moon.

The agriculture fields, their bed.

Each road is longer here,
don’t disturb the peaceful giants.
Fishing for a more glorious sunset 
around each twist of the braid. 

Filing their sweet corn,
brushing the fall leaves,
combing the sticky wheat

with silent fingers. 
 

On my green pond
lily pads link roots
and leave thinking space
above drowning.

Now that I’ve aged 
 (willingly now)

I know dragonflies’ wings
represent the raised veins
on the back of my clobbered hands,
the iridecent wings. 

Why not make them
the furthest lifeline 
and live to accomplish each flight?

Every 4 years
it's their election.

Every 4 years 
I am older,
still waiting.

You play her like a piano,
stumbling over each note until
a beautiful ballad falls out. 

One day each tree will bring out
an organic grass fed napkin
and seep up the love pooling at their roots.

Each dangling apple will let go
and the struggle to fall gracefully
will be told again to the earth,
recognized to be unanimous.

I look out upon disaster
and call it beautiful. 

And all the bloody flowers

I can’t write.
Poetry isn’t birthed all at once - 
I get hurt making it

Every lyric has a place on my wrist,
each rhyme sounds like a clock ticking,
every stanza: a notch under the belt, 
bruises on the waistline. 
No matter how many pages I fill,
my cup does not overflow. 

This is what happens when poetry 
turns into suicide notes. 
Don’t you know, 
midlife isn’t 40 for everyone
Now we live longer, 
die sooner. 

I am 14.
I have already written my last will and testament.

Don’t you know how heavy the scales are?
Don’t you remember when
mermaid skin could help you breathe?
Now we can’t breathe at all.

My generation 
held up sticky baby hands 
at protests 
before we learned the alphabet.

We are the ones 
on the broken boat
welding the mistakes you hid under duct tape.