Rooted Star
/DL Pravda
Planted the tulip poplar four feet from the fence
I would guess in 2005. 7 feet tall. 79 dollars.
From the Suffolk nursery that no longer exists.
Drove her through the tunnel with her head out the window.
Dug the hole with the short spade from Lynndale.
Watered her once. Now she's 30
feet tall, easy, with a wide canopy of two-tone
green leaves and orange flowers open wide
like mouths of baby birds. Coronated by clouds
and serenaded by wind, she commands the holly,
magnolia, camelias and azaleas. She dreams
she will be the tallest tree in the world.
Author’s Statement: Planting the tulip poplar, a native tree, in my backyard almost 20 years ago is one of the best things I have ever done. Not only have I blocked out the neighbor, I have watched the tree take over the yard and sky. My yard as a whole is a mini tree sanctuary in the middle of a centuries-old neighborhood. The trees attract birds, squirrels and other critters, and, on occasion, I sit and wait with my pen and notebook for poems to fly into the yard.
Bio: DL Pravda tries to keep it together either by jamming distorted reverb juice in his ears or by driving to the country and disappearing into the woodsfarm dimension. Recent work appears in Bookends Review, The Meadow, Poetry Quarterly, Rockvale Review and South 85. He also appeared on the Library of Congress podcast "The Poet and the Poem” with Maryland laureate Grace Cavalieri in 2023. Pravda teaches at Norfolk State University.
