GloPoWriMo Day 11 - as tree has [man]

Each day the folks at NaPoWriMo are offering a prompt, and I'll start there and see what happens. I'm using my daily drafts to work on a middle grade book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree drafts this month. 

APR 11

Write your own erasure/blackout poem. You could use a page from a favorite book, a magazine, what have you. It can be especially fun to play with a book you don’t know, particularly one that deals with an unfamiliar topic.

I used this handy tool I found at Tricia Stohr-Hunt's April daily poem project and it presented me with--rather perfectly--a text from "Accepting the Universe" by John Burroughs As you'll see, I disagree!

https://fouuund.it/blackout/

"I do not see that Nature is any more solicitous about the well-being of man than she is, say, about the well-being of trees. She is solicitous about the well-being of all life, so far as the conditions of life favor its development and continuance — men and trees alike. But all have to run the gantlet of some form of hostile forces — the trees one kind, man another. What I mean is that evil in some form waits upon all hindrances, accidents, defeat, failure, death. The trees and the forests have their enemies and accidents and setbacks, and men and communities of men have analogous evils. Trees are attacked by worms, blight, tornadoes, lightning, and men are attacked by pestilence, famine, wars, and all manner of diseases. Every tree struggles to stand upright; it is the easiest and only normal position. Men aspire to uprightness of thought and conduct, but a thousand accidental conditions prevent most of them from attaining it. One tree in falling is likely to bring down, or to mutilate, other trees, as the moral or business downfall of a strong man in a community is quite sure to bring evil to many others around him. Trees struggle with one another for moisture and sustenance from the soil, and for a place in the sun, as men do in the community, and the luckiest, or the most fit, survive. Nature plans for a perfect tree as she plans for a perfect man, but both tree and man have to take their chances with hostile forces and conditions amid which their lot falls, so that an absolutely perfect oak or elm or pine is about as rare as a perfect man. Nature has endowed man with mental and spiritual powers which she has not bestowed upon trees."

Here's my redacted version, with a lot of manliness marked so we don't forget there are more than one kind of hu[man]!

As tree has [man]

Do not see any more

[man] than trees. 

All favor, all form, forces all:

trees and [men] analogous.

all manner stand upright;

one tree to other trees as

a strong community.

With moisture and sustenance,

a place in the sun, do

most survive—a perfect plan

for both tree and [man].

So absolutely oak or elm or pine,

as [man], has powers bestowed.

draft ©HM 2026

One more day to catch up!