The River Birch Revises Its Life

Sometimes disparate parts of my life come together in surprising ways. Or maybe not so surprising, since we humans seem inherently drawn to metaphor. We want to see connections. Maybe we even need such connections to survive.

This afternoon the guy who designed and developed much of our landscaping stopped by to take a look around. We had a look at the river birch, which has a few clumps that look distinctly different from the rest of the tree. These clumps have smaller, drier, more condensed leaf clusters. Upon closer investigation, Daniel determined these clumps belong to the original tree, the one with a root ball that came from a nursery. The rest of the tree--the healthier, larger part (that looks like the main tree now)--is actually from an offshoot that grew after being planted and adjusting to the soil.

Then this evening in Leatha's revision class, she pointed out that sometimes we must abandon the original impulse of the poem to find a truer, better poem--the real poem. What a challenge for most of us! Particularly if the original impulse has some nice language or images, if it looks like a real poem. Sometimes we can develop a poem only so far using the original impulse and thus must follow the offshoot that becomes the real poem.

I tell myself: remember the river birch.