(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
A more autobiographical poem has never been written. Like most of my white on black poems, this is the product of a dark night. It’s this simple: either in the middle of a sleepless night, or when I give up sleeping before dawn, I write a poem. My phone (where I write poems) is still in dark mode. That means white text on a black background. Sometimes I just do a screen capture and post. Other times, I recreate the effect in an editing program. The dark scheme seems appropriate.
Autobiographical
This is one of the poems I wrote after a branch fell on our electrical service and caused a fire in our house. You can probably see the connection to that in the poem. But there are other things that I have to give up as I grow in wisdom and humility. That’s what I mean by “bodies of all sorts.”
The accuracy of the last stanza is debatable, but worth contemplating.
Here’s a picture of one of our actual old trees. Later this week, we’re meeting with an arborist to talk about that tree’s future.
