Lately, I’ve been reading the Minnesota poet, Louis Jenkins. I love the way his prose poems contain both humor and a touch of darkness, the way they twist and twine around an idea or an image. They play seriously. That’s the kind of poem for me! So, I decided to give the form a try. This is completely experimental, my first-ever attempt at such a thing.

PS. I’m not even sure what a prose poem is, exactly, but I think this might be one…

Like a Tree

Once upon a time I was young and on the lookout for metaphors. They’d appear like boxelder bugs: I found them everywhere. About that same time, I hiked up the Rose Lake Cliff that overlooks Canada. On top, 400 feet above almost everything, the wind blew hard and fast, all the way from Lake Winnipeg. It pummeled an old spruce tree that grew like Yoda from the rocks, battering it this way, yanking it that way. I imagined how many winters this tree had endured, exposed to the icy blast of Arctic snow, how it tapped a meager living from the cleaved rock. Its will to live was great. Its fortitude vast. It personified sisu, a Finnish word my aunt Nedra said means perseverance beyond reason.

While I observed and pondered, the tree uprooted in the gale, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff.

Several years later, I scrubbed greasy fry pans deep beneath a Minneapolis restaurant. Turns out, one of the guys I worked with was just like that tree. I think it helped our relationship to have met him earlier as a metaphor.

© Steve Peterson