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We'll be workshopping this one tomorrow. The assignment was to write a persona poem from the perspective of the oldest redwood tree. Because I'm writing about an inanimate object and the professor didn't want to have to "guess" what it was about, I chose to just make that the title--at least for now.
The Oldest Redwood
I was thinking about this the other day, as the supperlight rang
in the sky, because I like to ponder these things, and I was wondering,
are they sentient? They move so fast that I have barely spun
a polite root out to them before they’re gone, and I’m left
rounding earth rather uselessly. It’s quite a puzzle, in fact.
I suppose that if they are, I must seem a god, a glorious astounding
miracle of a thing; reverently they adorned me with blue
cornflower-sap circles, came to me on those four-legged sow
ants and crooned their names over and over to the sky, but could not
chirp out mine. My name is two thousand dewy mornings long
and they are so very minute, after all. I breathe, and they are sagging past
in ragged northern clumps, bent under the weight of their carrysacks, and
(it’s amazing how much they can carry for their size, amazing)
when I exhale, they have their backs against me, guarded and watching
the pale invasion from the east. These newcomers do not sing
nearly so sweetly, but their plumage is just gorgeous. Mark this: I take
a moment to collect myself, I reach out a branch, just common politeness
now, and there are blacksnake rivers of stone rolling through my house, I can’t
imagine what they might be for. These things move like water, they never
seem to tire of going somewhere. How can they be sentient
when they are so obsessed with the surface of things, and this moving
all the time? I’d like to sit them down on my roots and set things
straight: there is no hurry. Ponder a star for an eon, and you might evolve
enough to understand that you can’t go anywhere until you know exactly
where you are. Even I don’t know that much. I stand and wonder and wait
for the sun to give me an answer with my breakfast. I wait for the earth
to clasp my feet and shake all of the tight things loose again, to spew
a hot argument with the ocean I can smell but not see, to shiver
my children free, and for the wind to carry them far enough to grow
on their own, ponderously, and with due care not to intrude.
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