GloPoWriMo Day 6 - a conversation

 

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 6

In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream, after Yentl van Stokkum's It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe.”

On the day this tree tells me its name it's not a dream

We know each other quite well now–we first met when I fell off the bus one afternoon, scraped my knee, waited for the bus to pull away and then limped over to sit and lean against it, throbbing with embarrassment. 

–I think only the bus driver noticed–said the tree, a towering southern magnolia.

--You think?--I said, catching a sob.

--Actually I know. It’s one of the powers of the Grandiflora.-- 

I had to know about the powers of this magnolia tree, I asked a dozen questions but not its name. I though it was called simply Grandiflora, that all similar trees shared this name, so a year later as I was using its untrimmed lower branches to hoist myself into the cool of its leathery leafcladding, I was surprised when it asked my name.

–What’s your name? You visit often but you’ve never introduced yourself.--

–I like to be called Sylvie,– I answered–but that’s not my real name. Is Grandiflora your real name?--

–My real name is Cerolia, and I’m not an it. I’m a we.--

–A “we”?--

–Most trees call themselves we. It’s the royal We, certainly, but also the plural we:

many branches, many leaves, many seeds, many offspring. You humans could be we too.--

–I see what you mean,-- I said, –so we are called Sylvie and you-plural are called Cerolia.--

–We are pleased to finally know your name, Sylvie.--

And Cerolia shook their waxy green, rust-lined leaves around us like laughing.