Woods Walking
My friends and I discuss the names of trees.
Though none of us are arborists, each one
knows a species here and there, so by degrees
we call out the woods entire. Our walk began,
though none of us are arborists, with each one
saying, “Look at that tree! What is it?” Until another
called out the wood, the leaves, and thus began
our game of claiming knowledge, but soon enough our
saying failed us. Each tree resembled another,
so we started inventing names none would believe,
our game of claiming knowledge soon enough
descending to wild insistences meant to deceive
no scientist. Inventing names none would believe
is story-making, an act the woods enable.
Meant to delight and inspire, not to deceive,
is the job not of the lie but of the fable,
the story, the poem, the play. Soon we were able
to label fishmaw, fat-step, monkey shell
every shrub we saw, no lies but only fable,
and we laughed at the names we conjured from our warm well
of ignorance, maw-deep, fat-lipped, an empty shell
of absent knowledge we filled, by degrees,
with conjured joy. How warm, how wild, how well
go the days when friends discuss the names of trees.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. Her collection A Dangerous Heaven was published in 2023, and her chapbook Play was published in 2016. She lives in Florence, SC, where she teaches at Francis Marion University and serves as poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.
