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 me

i tried not to wake my daughters scaring him away

they woke anyways

irony is never lost on poets

my daughters

have ears and eyes and hearts of their own

they would’ve seen the evidence in the morning

those 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 house

meant to turn us

from innocent and sweet

to Victors

sometimes i still dream about eating strawberries during a time i could pretend

Alaskan fruit has a taste

the 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 deeper

the moose was just doing what moose do and

had he not

consumed what i perceived as mine

would i have let the feathers guide me

to God

a boy moose ate my tulips and i was pissed

as 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 me

elbow deep in dirt

listening 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, god

they were beautiful

and they picked me but the moose

in all of his immature adolescent volatile and majestic nature

freed me

from my attachment to pretty things

that just so happen to be there

the moose released me from all that tied me

to roots that were never mine to begin with

freed me to get dirt under my nails and

discover buried treasure

to weed the roots

that would no longer strangle all

i was planting

i prayed to co-create

which means

getting my hands dirty 

More from Erynne DeVore ↓

• @poemsprayersandswears on Instagram
• She has two poetry books, Discovering Divinity: Poems, Prayers and Swears, and The Labyrinth of Heartbreak: A collection of poetry for the lovers and the heartbroken
• You can listen to me read mother all by Erynne @rembrandts.cure

Mentioned in this episode:

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Write 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.

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