This is one of my more recent poems. I wrote it upon entering Georgia State University in 2006. The park across the road from my apartment was the inspiration, if you’ve ever been to Hurt Park, or any of the many parks in Atlanta, I hope you can relate.

The bushes were all growing,
ugly as they were,
mangled, tangled, reaching
for what they were before.

The tree was overgrown then,
the path it overtook.
I was just because the people
weren’t there to look.

All it needed was a little love,
some pruning here and there,
and now the leaves and stems and grass
can breathe the autumn air.

The people can return now,
and they can walk the path,
and sit beside the bushes
and take a cool sunbath.

The young adults will grow up,
as the bushes did before,
some mangled, tangled, reaching
for something so much more.

These people, they will gather,
and you can see each face,
because the dreams they each held,
no longer they embrace.

Somewhere along the pathway,
a branch would get too long,
no gardener would prune it,
no longer did it belong.

All it needed was a little love,
if the world had only seen,
that the mangled, tangled reacher
could have grown into a tree.

-mdl