I've been fascinated by Santa Barbara nature lately—which today's poem reflects—a poem about bottlebrush trees, and souls, and forgiveness. My next poem, too, is about Santa Barbara plants, specifically the giant birds of paradise in my backyard.
I'm no Robert Frost. I like to think I don't write a lot of nature poems, but a few posts ago, I said I don't write a lot of surreal poems and I'm finding myself to be—well, completely full of shit.
Bottlebrush trees are just so exotic to me. I remember chatting with my friend Anna, who is from somewhere else, a cold and wet place judging from the pictures I've seen, and she said the same thing. They just seem so other-worldly.
They're adaptable, too. I've seen them as shrubs, as hedges, as huge trees with weeping branches. When the light shines through and ricochets off the small twines of the red flowers, it's disconcerting how beautiful I find it to be.
Surprisingly, this won't be the largest transitional jump I've ever made in a post—but I don't believe in the Christian idea of Final Judgment. I often consider something else though: that maybe our souls are tested in between our physical lives to determine the progress of our enlightenment.
And then I wonder what would go into a test like that? Will we hear testimony from our loved ones—from strangers, from animals, from trees? Might as well cover my bases—so I put my hands on bottlebrush trees and tell them I love them.
Christians pretend they're eating the actual body of Christ and drinking his blood, but I'm the weird one. 😂
Today's Poem
I'm starting to build a muscle around using dreams as frameworks for poems. There's just so much possibility there—and often, I find, anything can happen. And sometimes, the things I "dream" of happening come true a little bit. No, I don't know what that means.
Last year, I wrote the final sonnet to a much larger poem that ended up being a prophecy of sorts.
Last night, I dreamed about my father—
dreams of the Arkansas horizon, orange
sun cresting over the Ozark ridge, color
drawn on everything. Soft dew glistens
atop fields of grass. My father sitting alone
with his dog, reading his worn out Bible.
It felt like the present. I could smell the air.
He asks me, in the dream, if I know God,
if God is still in my heart. And I tell him no.
I say the truth knowing it’s just a dream.
The Lord God Bird resurrected, I hear
their song in the trees. It’s a dream, so
it can be any song I want. It’s a dream, so
my father says ok—and reaches—to kiss me.
I've never really had this dream. It's something I made up. Still, about two months ago, my father and I had it out after 40 years.
Listen, he had it coming. The man has broken his children and is only now wondering why none of us come to visit him. I find it willfully obtuse.
I was strangely calm when I admitted I don't believe in his religion or his god. That he was abusive. I let him have it for 45 minutes. And while he didn't reach to kiss me, he stood there while I raked him over the coals, which is more than I expected him to do. The one thing I got him to admit was that his love for me wasn't dependent on what I believed. I'm still not sure that's true, but it was a start and more than I honestly thought I would get.
So what's the thing I learned here? Poems don't always have to be completely true for their truths to take root in reality. I learned sometimes, even the dreams we made up—can be prophetic. Poetry makes my soul grow, to use the words of Kurt Vonnegut. And poetry, for me, can be a little witchy.
Here comes the bottlebrush tree—let me put it in my cauldron of words.
