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Our State Tree Is A Ghost

Michal Sextion 2001 (Louisiana)

Free verse
Wood drenched in salt
Becomes seasoned fungi
Food. Forever stuck, fearfully
Watching the water rise.
Bald like Casper,
But the Cypress cannot move.
Its knees bend in pain,
Then disappear,
While its home drowns.
The ghost reaches
For help. Instead,
It is replaced
By Man-
The same Man
Who tore it down
For it was resilient.
But now, the Cypress
Is tired and sleeps.
Forever.

About this poem

I wrote this poem to bring awareness to the Louisiana coastal state. Due to saltwater and erosion, the state tree, the Bald Cypress, dies, but one can still see the dead trunks in the swamps; locals call them "ghost forests."

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Written on July 17, 2022

Submitted by poetry4me on July 31, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

23 sec read
1

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMMNOPQE
Closest metre Iambic dimeter
Characters 379
Words 77
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 19
Full analysis for Our State Tree Is A Ghost »

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