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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas #934784 added May 18, 2018 at 4:21pm
Restrictions: None
The Oak Tree
Prompt: Write a poem about a tall mountain or a tall tree.
Let's take the tall tree or tall mountain and create a story with one or both of them as characters. I know you're creative, you live in Blog City. So, bring them alive.
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If it weren’t for the starling’s song, I wouldn’t tilt my head up and observe how tall the old oak was. I smiled as its branches jiggled when the bird flew off it with couple more of its kind following. Then, I took a deep breath of the sweet, fresh air and felt the caress of the breeze, so slight that I might have imagined it.
“As long as this oak lives, the spirits tied to it will look over us,” said my young companion, Chanise, her lips curved up. She was the daughter of the cook in the B&B we were staying.
I winced. “Spirits?”
Chanise caught my glance and bit her lower lip. “Yup, they are with the Father and they are with us at the same time. That’s what my Ma says.”
“Oh!” I said, feeling emptied of any answers. This was my first time visiting the Southern Appalachia and I didn’t know much about the local beliefs.
Chanise was in her early teens but almost as tall as me. She shook her tightly curled hair and smiled shyly, her eyes shining like black agates. I noticed the many colors reflected on her dusky brown skin as if a mirror would of its environs. How beautiful she is! I thought. She looked like an ancient princess with her loose-fitting dress falling straight off her shoulders to her ankles. She moved to the side of the tree, curving her arm around its trunk in a somewhat protective touch.
“How do you know this tree has spirits?” I asked.
“Look over there, yonder,” she said, pointing to the forest at the foot of the closest mountain. I squinted, taking in the sight of the range of the majestic Blue Mountains.
”See all those trees?” After I nodded, Chanise continued. “Those bunch together. This here tree is standing alone. You know why? It’s because of the people hanged on it.”
Suddenly startled, I exclaimed, “Oh, but that’s so terrible!”
“Ma says my great grandpa was hanged on it, too. For stealing a chicken, which he didn’t do.”
Seeing the shock on my face, she took a few steps near me. “No more,” she said. “Folks don’t do stuff like that no more.”
Of course! She was talking of the lynchings. I had read about those.
“Thank God!” I said, lifting my eyes up again to the oak, standing loftily like a statue dressed in a heavy coat of emerald leaves and casting feverish shadows from its painful past.
The Oak Says
Something in me, I never mention
as I hold my head up high,
yet with fear and frayed nerves,
and I lose myself in a mirror
far-away in centuries
under the haunting
of the moon.
For my green is tinged with red
against the faded marks of rope
circling around my ancient bark
while I grieve my fate and
lament the past
as if some invalid
begging for forgiveness
for this torn world.
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