Larry Shitsverse: Trees

I cannot identify a tree 

in the winter. The bark 

doesn't catch in the folds

of my brain the way 

an oak leaf does, or the 

blooms on a magnolia,

purple petals cupped tightly

in the April wind.

 

For all I know, on the first

winter night in the glow of

street lamp and chalk moon,

the dogwood trades places

with the Japanese maple,

roots creeping over the

pavement, dirt clods and

gravel trailing.

 

Yes, of course someone

might notice that a

crab apple is now a 

cherry tree, a myrtle 

is now a tulip. 

But maybe not.

 

Maybe they are transformed

by the soil.

 

Maybe all it takes for

a dogwood to try on

new skin is for it to sink

its feet into the loosened

earth and wiggle its toes

in the sandy mud where

a birch tree once stood.

_____________________ 

I like the way this poem reads. This is free verse, meaning it has no rhymes or meter. It isn't taking on any kind of traditional or pre-determined poetic form. Which isn't to say that free verse has no rhythm. Good free verse presents itself to be read at a certain pace with a certain emphasis on words that creates a rhythmic feeling. Like the way the stanzas are organized. I'm not sure how a poet goes about determining how long a line should be or how many lines should be in a stanza. They probably just try out different formats and see how it looks and reads. But my guess is that Larry just wrote these lines out and gave hardly any thought to rhythm or how it looks on the page. Probably...