Several weeks ago, the University of Nebraska
extension center called me and asked me if for $50
I would write a poem for them that
ran no longer than 12 lines.
And I said, well, I might.
I didn't want them to get the notion that I could
be bought that easily though.
I, of course, can.
So I held out and I said, could you
describe to me a little bit what you want it for
and what you'd like besides fewer than 12 lines?
They said, what we'd like to use it on a textbook, the poetry
textbook that will be sent to all the high schools
in the United States.
And I said, wow.
He said, we'll put a little drawing
on the cover with your poem.
I said, that'd be real good.
They said, we'd like to have the poem narrative.
And I said, that's all right.
I like narrative poems.
And he said, we'd also like for the details
to be fairly specific.
And I said, I like that.
I like poems that are rooted.
And he said, we don't want it to be simple though.
I said, no, I don't like simple poems.
And after the laying down of all the rules, I couldn't resist.
It seemed impossible, especially the final request
that it not offend any high school parent.
That, of course, was the clincher when he told me
that I could not resist.
I also discovered that when I deliberately set out
to write a 12 liner, I couldn't do it.
I wrote many long poems.
The deadline drew near.
I had promised this fellow that I would send him at least four.
So finally, right on the edge of the deadline,
I sent him the four poems.
The shortest one of which was 20 lines.
Figuring that I had spoiled it.
But I had promised him something.
So I sent them.
And they used the tow liner.
So with that in mind, here's the poem.
I have no idea, whether it works.
It's called Unplanting The Tree.
I climb to the top of a full blown hickory
to whisper the secret into the veins
of the most inaccessible leaf.
The leaf convinced passes it on.
And by the time I returned to the ground, already
the tree is growing slowly down.
I sit on the porch watching the leaves flicker, breakaway,
fall, loose substance, disappear.
By evening, the bark is smooth and green,
the limbs no more than switches in the wind.
In darkness, then the roots rise.
In moonlight, wash themselves to seed.
In time, in time, all in good time.
Dawn finds us restless in the soil wild
in our little wreckages to live again.
I hope no irate high school parent
comes after me with a 12 gauge.