Essay: Below an Oak Tree

Yesterday under a Southern red oak tree I sat with my 12-month old child. The child sat in my lap and looked in wonder at the birds, the grass, the trees and the brightness of the outdoors. Dry crunchy leaves from last year populate the lawn below the oak like Wheaties sprinkled about the land. I handed the child an oak leaf which was examined intently. The leaf was turned front to back and finally raised toward the fading rays of the setting sun. The child uttered something and held high the brown fragile remnant of yesteryear as one might imagine a shaman performing a ritual to the sacred moments of a day.

With this wonder I approach poetry. So often people view poetry as piles of leaves in need of mulching or burning. Why this has happened only scholars know. However, to those souls who lift a leaf to the sun, examine its veins and wonder at its sublime nature I write poetry.

There are many books on how to write poetry or rather the technical aspects (i.e. meter, rhyme, line, etc.) of writing poetry. However, unless you start writing you will remain with a book in your hand and a world that needs to be changed by poems you have yet to birth. In her book The Writing Life Annie Dillard writes: “After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice … ‘Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.’”

For aspiring poets I think it is paramount to write and write and leave the technical composition for the revision process. Handle words as you might a leaf. The science of a leaf and its connection the the tree and the ecosystem at large will stall the exploration process. Sometimes a single word will spark that wonder. For example, consider the word “sojourn”. How does it sound when you say it out loud? How does it taste when you say it? Write it upon a sheet of paper and feel the curve of the “s” and the dot of the “j”. Then hold it to the light and wonder. Wonder and write and revise and wonder some more.

Originally published on Write Stuff. Reprinted with permission in Wander, Volume 1, Number 4