Here's a poem I wrote previously and posted on the old forum. I was never quite satisfied with the ending. I didn't feel like I quite expressed the tree's death in the right way. I don't know why, but I was thinking about the poem today when inspiration struck. I revised the ending and like the overall tone a lot better now.
Stanzas 7 and 9 are completely new, and I rewrote the last line of stanza 6.
Quoted Text
Two mammoth oaks danced to the breeze-- Branches rubbing gingerly in beat. A gust. A not-quite-ripe acorn. Falling... It was falling towards Ground. The wind blew, and blew, and blew. By a pond, it grew, and grew, and grew.
Went from seed to a spruce sapling, This tree had just about everything A tree could ever want, except-- Another tree to share it all with. All day he talked with his reflection Thinking he was making conversation.
Over the years, his bark coarsened, And he naturally began to lean Over the pond that quenched his thirst. What? What was coming up the glade? A boy--no two--giggling, playing. On one of his limbs, they placed a swing.
The boys returned day after day, Year after year the boys grew and changed, But so did Tree: Grew big and wide. Every evening the moonlight shined Upon tree's constant companion, The pond; once upon a star-struck boy--
With a beautiful girl in hand. The tree tried to cover his branches, But the Fall left him with few leaves. The boys' visits became less frequent, And Tree was left his reflection Thinking he was making conversation.
The tree's branches had grown heavy, But now his boys had returned ready To swing boys of their own from him. Something was different: A sad hint. The swing was removed quietly Leaving their boyhood haunt with a "bye."
Vroom! It was a ghastly noise. Metal and bark violently join. Rotted, the old tree's trunk crumbles, And out from the hollow, crawl spiders Living in his empty insides. The day the boys left, the day he died.
The boys' parents had sold the plot; The boys gone had no use for the pond. A mall to be built in its place Where large crowds would hustle and race Just to glimpse at their reflection Thinking they were making conversation.
At least the tree knew what it was like To have felt love, to have been alive. Many bustling above his grave Would never experience the same For they were already hollow Still searching for what the tree had found.
Matthew, I was looking carefully at your poem, and in the second stanza, you have the line "Went from seed to a spruce sapling"
You established that the tree is an oak, because it grew from an acorn, but the word spruce confused me. I looked it up and spruce can mean two things.
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noun a widespread coniferous tree that has a distinctive conical shape and hanging cones, widely grown for timber, pulp, and Christmas trees
or
Quoted Text
adjective neat in dress and appearance
And since you're using it as an adjective, it works. So anyway, nice use of subtle differences of words in the english language.
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