She took a simple interest in a stump.

Just a log. A common base of a tree.

I didn’t understand why.

So I asked.

It’s decaying she said.

Yeah so? I asked.

There was life here, growth.

Here, look at the rings inside.

So I did.

"There’s a new one every year" she told me.

"You can see how old it is."

It was just a tree.

"Think about the magnitude of this,

"The power.

"A tree is a home.

"It’s branches expand so far,

"It’s leaves taking in every drop of sunlight.

"The tree is food.

"It’s air.

"It’s life.

"We couldn’t function without."

And she just kept looking at it with that far away gaze,

Like she had the universe in her hands; awestruck, transcendental.

I still didn’t understand.

But I think that’s what I see in her.

Now, read this again with the pitter patter of a light rain in the background.

Behind the Poem...Math Class

I wrote this poem on 11/14/19 as a school project. I was taking a college algebra course online at the time, and they had a contest for writing a math poem. We had to use 10 words from a list of list of algebra-related vocabulary terms, the underlined words being the ones I chose. Honestly, I have no idea (and didn't know then either) whether this poem was supposed to actually be related to math, or if we just had to use the words for the assignment. I'm pretty sure the contest itself was for general poetry, but the class assignment required the words. I chose to just use the words as homonyms. I was very proud of this poem, and still am, even though it didn't win anything.

It's pretty and it feels reminiscent. Sometimes that last line "read it again..." feels like it was too much, but I don't want to remove it either. I like knowing that what I was writing then really isn't all that different from what I write now in the sense that it's a little out of touch in a fantasy, rose-colored world kind of way. Art was an outlet, and I took every chance I could to use it whether that be music, writing, or visual arts. I was in art club for two years, attended the art conventions, played flute for six years and won a few things for it, took AP music theory, learned to make stop motion with yarn dolls, painted at least 15 canvases that are currently hanging in my cat room, learned book binding, knitting, crocheting, weaving, and whatever else I could get my hands on.

I don't have the time anymore to do hardly any of that. But that's why this is here. No one should lose that sense of wonder and pure will to create regardless of the quality. It's a natural pursuit. This poem is a reminder of that - even in math class there is room to write about wanderlust.

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