A Writer’s Nature
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Listen! Listen, as nimble fingers tap
Staccato beats across the keys,
Pausing —
A caesura before pouncing, trouncing!
Clash! go the dissonant thoughts,
The clamoring words.
What a mumbling jumble as letters,
They tumble!
How freeing it’s been, divorcing
Sense for Seuss and reason for raisins —
The tiniest taste of mint-flavored paste.
Feral words run roughshod
Through hallowed halls,
Where tusks of long-dead mammoths droop
In shame. No one’s to blame;
Except —
Maybe —
The man who first figured out
That if we chopped and ground the solid stump
Of a stolid tree in a heartless machine,
We could pour out our longing,
Our lush, verdant forest dreams,
Our love —
For nature (and one another) —
Upon the corpse of a tree
We never stopped to hug.
Whose branches we never climbed
So that we could see
That forest, for the trees.
Holly Jahangiri is the author of Trockle; A Puppy, Not a Guppy; and A New Leaf for Lyle. She draws inspiration from her family, from her own childhood adventures (some of which only happened in her overactive imagination), and from readers both young and young at heart. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, J.J., whose love and encouragement make writing books twice the fun.
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