Published on Prompt for the Planet, Displayed at Dublin Public Library, and Featured in Viewless Wings Publisher Poetry Podcast
Check out the online publication of my poem, “The Torrent and the Tree,” in Amanda Gorman’s partnered project with Prompt for the Planet: https://promptfortheplanetarchive.omeka.net/items/show/120. It was also published by Viewless Wings Publisher: https://anchor.fm/viewlesswings/episodes/City-of-Dublin-Poetry-Walk-Read-by-the-Poets-Part-1-e1gee6f
This poem was also included in a Dublin Poetry Walk during the month of April 2022, displayed at the Dublin Public Library, and featured in Viewless Wings Publisher’s Poetry Podcast.
The Torrent and the Tree
Why does it struggle so?
Its branches tremble and shiver
against that which will inevitably
overcome it.
The biting rain flogs its leaves,
the raw wind mauls its branches.
The irate river, pulsing and rupturing the embankment,
whips up slumbering silt and loosens the hold of its roots.
Lawless rapids sweep around it triumphantly,
dragging the tree to a slow prostrate death.
Yet it resists
as if sheer will can repel the forces which
assault it.
A few extra minutes of life, worth the agony.
The tree twists and twines with a pluck it did not know it possessed,
its impaled soul refuses the sweet death that beckons.
It seems to know why it is there.
Its defiant arms are streaked with rugged lines
from splintering cracks,
its trunk scarred with raw nubs
where young branches fanning budding leaves
once grasped the sky.
As it sinks to the will of the aggressor,
the trembling forest bears witness,
comprehends
it is the tree which has overcome the torrential waters.
Its measure,
Now resting in long-overdue quietude,
gazes gratefully at Heaven
for not even Death can erase
those precious defiant moments
it spent on Earth.
