What I Learned from the Trees

By L.E. Bowman

2021 Button Poetry Short Form Poetry Contest Winner

What I Learned from the Trees delves into the intricate relationship between humans and nature, and how these often overlooked, everyday interactions affect us as individuals, families, and communities. With a backbone rooted in primordial imagery and allegory, and a focus on how the growing disconnect with our own wants, needs, and fears creates deeper divides in our relationships, this collection is notably relevant to today's society and the struggles we face with the ever-expanding detachment between humans and the natural world. Aren't all living creatures seeking a notable existence? A deep sense of belonging? Of relevance? Of purpose? Of love? How often do we yearn for these wants, yet fight the vulnerability it takes to reach them? Why do we so clearly seek each other, yet refuse to reach out our hands?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Button Poetry
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638340188

L.E. Bowman

Lauren E. Bowman is a 34-year-old writer born and raised among the Gulf of Mexico marshes and sweeping oaks of north Florida, USA. Lauren’s writing is blunt, bold, and speaks with raw honesty about her personal struggles with relationships, self-acceptance, and self-love. Her work seeks to encourage others to learn from and rise above their own difficulties and doubts, and to find a place of reflection, empowerment, and acceptance. She lives in Tallahassee, FL.

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even though she has butt implants Gym bro doing curls and grunting

WHAT I LEARNED

FROM THE TREES

WHAT I

LEARNED

FROM THE

TREES

poems by

L.E. Bowman

© 2021 by L.E. Bowman

Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover design: Nikki Clark

ISBN 978-1-638340-06-5

Ebook ISBN 978-1-63834-018-8

For Heather Lee

This is my battle cry.

It’s filled with sadness,

but it’s dripping with hope.

Trees speak in a language of whispers,

of subtle glances, of flickering light.

All quiet and stillness and somehow still dancing.

All reaching down, digging deep,

and somehow still moving closer to the sky.

Their language isn’t complicated,

but we can’t seem to learn it.

The simplicity is daunting,

the gentleness difficult for a human to grasp.

The understanding that just being

is our purpose.

The realization that existing

is enough

Contents

I.

That feeling when you are empty

When finding your voice, sometimes you have to scream

The doctor tells me we are living longer

When you know that they are a house on fire

When you go weeks without rain

I must step outside of a feeling to see it clearly

Don’t ask me to pour out my heart

Pain is an echo chamber only you can quiet

We were both water, but you were ice, and I was the sea

Some days will eat you

Sometimes you have to explain to your heart

The Coyotes: Part 1

Muzzles and razor blades

You seek salvation in others’ palms

The sky looks like a lover attempting to contain her pain.

It’s typically easier to blame the other person

If the world teaches us anything

The night presses against me, and I wish it was you

The bravest thing you can do is tell yourself the truth

Open the curtains so the sun can make love to your skin

I am trying to let the ocean in me speak

It’s never the earthquakes that defeat us

It’s not your roots that keep you grounded

It isn’t all lost, it just isn’t all found

Once you realize that your heart

This isn’t a becoming, this is an unbecoming

II.

Maybe we expect too much.

My life is better and worse than yours

That isn’t stardust under your fingers, it’s dirt.

The struggle isn’t to do as much as possible

We humans are so good at building

The subtlety of ghosts

The Haunting of (Insert Family Name)

When someone asks for my name, I give them yours

Closed or open, what does it matter?

My current obsession is fitness

Some of the unhappiest people I know

Snapping and burning

Every house is a tombstone

The dead coyote

We might all live on the same planet

How do you view the world with eyes fully open?

It’s strange, isn’t it

Farewell to an older generation

Twilight prayer

Not everything in this world is meant for you

Eden

Human doesn’t mean humane

III.

When they say that love is blind

I don’t know how to love slowly.

At some point, the change you so fear

The quiet doesn’t come when you see your path clearly.

Yearning

Life isn’t always about beating the waves.

It isn’t pretty, but it is beautiful.

Healing as a verb. Being. Doing.

Leave your heart behind if you need to.

Pour your pain into my palms.

This isn’t a rising, this is an unearthing, a cleansing

You were a vagrant dog pulling fruit

The most freeing moments can be the most frightening

Sure as the sun setting, you disappeared

The work

Your revenge is to keep going

I’m no longer afraid of giving

The Coyotes: Part II

Maybe we fumble when we go

Let the mended parts of you take care of the one

Don’t worry if you feel you aren’t blossoming

IV.

It wasn’t that the flowers smelled better

I watched the trees during the storm

Begin each day asking your body how it feels

Nothing and everything

Thriving and fresh and wholly awake

Things that make me feel alive

A storm of stardust, a battle of light

What more is there to be

Sometimes forgiveness is a closed door

Teach me how to love you in a language you understand

It’s enough that it happened.

Something bigger than me

And she says to me, am I not your home?

Endings don’t always matter

Stars

You are a collection of moments

Heather Lee

What I learned from the trees

It’s the detachment that does it,

that turns us into a lone tree in a forest

struggling for light.

Just one of many—

a part of something and somehow still lonely.

Close enough to touch each other

but too afraid to reach.

I

Trees will keep their fallen neighbors alive

by feeding the decaying roots with their own,

and I find it comforting

that it isn’t just humans.

who are afraid to let things go.

That feeling when you are empty, but have no room to expand

The monotony is killing me.

Only Saturday mornings feel different,

or the occasional Sunday if I didn’t

fully wreck myself the night before,

and the only real change is that the bed below me

isn’t mine and the arms around me are new.

It’s my weekly attempt at feeding that dark,

expanding hole in my gut,

but my lover’s arms just feel like another cage

I have to fight through.

Even on the worst days, I smile and swear I’m fine,

and by the world’s standards of living, I am.

There is water in the cup I carry,

the one with my name engraved on the side,

and I sweat enough for society to not comment

on my health or my size.

My house is clean, and the food I eat isn’t frozen,

and because of this I