Typewriter Rodeo: A Pandemic Garden

Each week, the Standard reaches out to Austin’s Typewriter Rodeo for a custom poem on Texas topics.

By David FruchterMay 21, 2021 1:32 pm,

Many people have reconnected or developed new connections with nature during the pandemic. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.

A Pandemic Garden

the main difference

between animals and plants

as I see it

is speed

we move so much faster

that tot them

we must be like flickering, transient spirits.

while to them, we seem immobile

like stationary objects

though this is far from true.

so what happens when we slow down

when our clever scurrying animal selves

are made to pause

to be still?

for many people, a new connection with the vegetable world is made.

as we find ourselves with the time to notice

how plants do move

and to help them grow.

and perhaps, just perhaps,

those beings of the green

also find themselves growing aware

In their slow, woody way

that these flickering, insubstantial visions

of warmth and motion may also be real

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