A Boy Moose Ate My Tulips by Erynne DeVore

A Boy Moose Ate My Tulips Erynne DeVore i discovered marbles and obsidian buried in my garden next to the worms after a moose ate my tulips“of course it was a boy moose,” someone joked with mei tried not to wake my daughters scaring him away they woke anyways irony is never lost on poetsmy daughtershave ears and eyes and hearts of their ownthey would’ve seen the evidence in the morningthose tulips were a gift from Mother Earth meant for my pleasure, the flowers that came to me in a dream after i turned my back on the housemeant to turn usfrom innocent and sweetto Victors sometimes i still dream about eating strawberries during a time i could pretend Alaskan fruit has a tastethe tulips were a gift and i blamed nature for taking them from me “the lord giveth and the lord taketh away” scripture gets just enough right we could forget to dig deeperthe moose was just doing what moose do andhad he not consumed what i perceived as minewould i have let the feathers guide me to Goda boy moose ate my tulips and i was pissedas if Divine gifts are mine alone as if i could expect him to be anything other than who and what he is as if God didn’t want meelbow deep in dirtlistening to Their question:what do you want to plant?!girl, CAN YOU HEAR ME?put your face to the earth feel me and ask yourself if just anything pretty deserves to be buried deep inside your home’s fertile ground?the tulips, godthey were beautiful and they picked me but the moosein all of his immature adolescent volatile and majestic naturefreed mefrom my attachment to pretty thingsthat just so happen to be therethe moose released me from all that tied meto roots that were never mine to begin withfreed me to get dirt under my nails anddiscover buried treasure to weed the roots that would no longer strangle alli was planting i prayed to co-createwhich meansgetting my hands dirty  More from Erynne DeVore ↓@poemsprayersandswears on InstagramShe has two poetry books, Discovering Divinity: Poems, Prayers and Swears, and The Labyrinth of Heartbreak: A collection of poetry for the lovers and the heartbrokenYou can listen to me read mother all by Erynne @rembrandts.cureMentioned in this episode:Write After with One Poem OnlyWrite After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice. If you want to join: Listen to a poem from the month of April on One Poem Only, then write your own in response. I will pick one for each day to read in June for a special series: One Poem After 🍎🍏 Submissions close May 15.Write After Submissions Form