earth day in tree poetry
On this day in praise of Mother Earth and in upholding all who are giving so much every day to save what we can in the bleakest of times, I’m inviting my readers to pause and try a writing prompt from Audrey Gitman for April Poetry Month:
Set a timer for 8 minutes. Don’t lift your pen from the paper (or stop typing, whatever is most comfortable for you) until the timer goes off. Don’t think. Your starting phrase is “I was standing outside of the…”.
Here’s my poem below—with photos to take you to the Grandmother Tree in the Turquoise Forest near my home, where soon the Lewis’s Woodpeckers will return to nest in certain snags, where Canyon Wrens sing a glissade of silvery notes from the lava rocks, where coyotes romp and yip at night, and where I slip into a sliver of wildness and ease into oneness, no longer outside.
Ecstasy, (from Greek ekstasis, “to stand outside of or transcend)
I was standing outside of Grandmother Ponderosa
wanting to be inside hands seeking and not finding
entry through her flaking puzzle bark hued in amber, maple, gold.
No opening in her black thick cracks, layers of jigsaw pieces,
impossible to complete the picture.
I was standing outside of myself in the epiphany—
knowing the key is to become breath, raindrop, sap rising.
To dissolve into Tree, do I come in storm when snowflakes
waft down to light upon my tongue? Or in sunshine
when heat enters every crack and Grandmother showers
my senses in vanilla, butterscotch, and rum?
I was standing outside of my nose burrowed into the crack
breathing in her aromatic terpenes and in the deep inhale
boundary between me and tree slipped away like a blocking
thought. How alike we are—Grandmother Tree and me.
My strawberry-blonde hair with streaks of gray flowing
right into your bark—but your colors a mark of turning 100 long ago,
shedding the younger gray-black bark for red-gold glory.
I was standing in yoga tree pose, one hand on Tree
Right foot raised to place sole of foot on left shin
Raising both arms high, reveling in my head as canopy
legs a sturdy trunk, fingers silky long ponderosa needles
filtering breeze like harp strings.
THANK YOU MY FRIENDS FOR THE WAY YOU TOUCH THIS EARTH, ARE TOUCHED, AND GIVE YOUR TOUCH THAT IS YOUR UNIQUE WAY OF EXPRESSING LOVE AND COMMUNITY.
HAPPY EARTH DAY APRIL 22, 2026
MARINA
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