City / Tree / Song
The sun hangs
like a sneaker suspended by its laces from a telephone wire /
and this tree, amidst soda cans and magazines, laughs so hard /
in the spring wears green leaves tangled in its branches /
cries so hard in the winter ice descends from its limbs /
and this tree who lives in the littered earth covered by city dirt /
this tree
who grows
in this square
patch of earth
in this shaking
dancing city /
its roots cling deep
to the shallow earth it has /
been granted
its branches reach high and far /
above bottle caps and beer cans and plastic bags
its green leaves waving /
and from root to canopy
it grows
and it grows
and it grows. //
Take me to this tree where the earth drinks bleach /
covered by the leftovers of the city and let me watch them grow. /
To all my unknowable questions, /
this tree is, after all, the only answer worth giving.
Carla Sofia Ferreira is a Portuguese-American poet and high school English teacher from Newark, NJ. Currently, she teaches English language development to first-generation immigrant students in the Bay Area. Past and forthcoming poems can be found at Awkward Mermaid, The Lascaux Review, and Shot Glass Journal. You can follow her on Twitter @csferreira08, though you have been warned that she uses an excess of emoji and gifs.
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