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July 2018
Penelope Moffet
penstemon1@gmail.com
​My friend Jane Culp is a painter who lives in a strawbale house on a patch of high desert land near Anza, CA. We've known each other 30 years. Occasionally pieces of her story find their way into my poems. Often my best work comes from time spent away from my home in the paved-over world of Los Angeles. This poem is part of my second chapbook, It Isn't That They Mean to Kill You, a collection of desert poems due out through Arroyo Seco Press this summer.

The Tree
 
​

Every day
there it was
outside the bathroom window
obvious and lovely
 
Every day
she admired
its glossy leaves
its cloud of creamy flowers
 
She never brought
her sketchbook in
never lifted paintbrush
only stared
 
Stranded in a farmhouse
with her once-strong man
who could no longer walk
 
What she recalls:
a tree that spoke
her failure to reply 
​© 2018 Penelope Moffet
Editor's Note:  If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF
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