If You Sprouted a Tree

a poem

Imagine, you sprouted a tree where your hair used to be.

Fur grew on your skin where your freckles had been.

The butterfly on your slick, black nose tickles you with dancing, tiny ‘toes’.

The birds swoop in and land and bring songs of the season, they delightedly sing.

I ask of you…

Shall you spend your days grazing corn off fields, remnants of farmers’ harvesting their yields?

Will you drink from the brook and regard your reflection as a falling from Man, or a face of perfection?

Imagine you sprouted a tree where your hair used to be

and in synchronous notes your heart now beats with the skies, the soils, the vines, the trees.

How will you tell humans, so they can see, that you feel the heartbeat of earth in your leaves?

Sometimes a picture is just so fascinating that I get wrapped up in it. I save it. I revisit it. I wait until it speaks poetry to me — this one took a while to speak, but speak it did.

Imagine — if we could feel the injustices of our earth — would we then be more inclined to act? To make drastic changes across our planet to address our Climate Crisis? I guarantee you, brief moments of “understanding” and we’d see it all more clearly.

I read a book several years ago called The Celestine Prophecy. It was a very cerebral, philosophical, spiritual book that went on about energy and vibrations and how this is in every living thing. Although much of the book went over my head at the time, I feel drawn to re-read it soon. Some of the underlying subject matter in that book all come to mind as I wrote this poem so I thought I’d share a few quotes from the book.

“…The human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty.” ― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

“We humans have always sought to increase our personal energy in the only manner we have known, by seeking to psychologically steal it from the others — an unconscious competition that underlies all human conflict in the world.” ― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

“History is not just the evolution of technology; it is the evolution of thought.” ― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

“Working to establish a more comfortable style of survival has grown to feel complete in and of itself as a reason to live, and we’ve gradually, methodically, forgotten our original question … We’ve forgotten that we still don’t know what we’re surviving for.” ― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

“The problem was that our focused, obsessive drive to conquer nature and make ourselves more comfortable had left the natural systems of the planet polluted and on the verge of collapse.” ― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

Christina Ward 🎄 is a poet, writer, and author of a collection of environmental, nature-based, and “organic human relationship”-inspired poetry. Her work has been featured in various poetic literary magazines and various Medium publications including Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry, Scribe, Blue Insights, From the Poet’s Heart, Lit Up, and others. She is the admin of the 💗POM-poets💗 who are pretty much the most awesome group of poets on the planet!