Poet Tree Town

by Ryan McCarty

My students are going to need a picket
of teachers again, so I’m lesson planning
a chant while I’m hanging laundry on the line.
I’m not a luddite but I learned that driers blow
microplastics by the millions and my bare feet

by Julie Zhou

warm mulberries on sidewalks
the concrete stained rich with
flavored faded chalk sketches
from a girl waiting for autumn

by Ares Valdiviezo

Neon rain
smiles down on my face.

Ladder up.
Change the letters—
a new screening,
a new day.

by Alyna Shae Er Lim

One misses the first kiss of blue skies,
where orange needlessly fights to reach the evergreens,
to drench golden, gilded fields
that makes one silent on the bench
shaded in between

by Angelica Esquivel

It is morning, before the sun has fully risen.
I stand before the Huron River, watching
the white mist spiral over the water. A swan
drapes herself into a circle on the bank.

by Anna Kovaleva

There’s a tradition in Ann Arbor to throw shoes onto power lines.
Hundreds hidden under leaves.
Many on display with nothing much around them.
Some even hang so low you could almost reach them.

by Cam Finch

for eric, and the birds

I feel the swifts coming
my bones are flowering with portent
and the clouds are
breathing signals again
it is time for us to count                                                  

by J.H. Riggs

This morning, I made a cake,
With a homemade marmalade from orange trees in Jordan,
And olive oil from the West Bank.

And my thoughts drift to my mother and of home.

by Keith Taylor

for my daughter

The large brown paw-paw seeds
evolved, perhaps, to be carried
in the guts of our megafauna,
our mammoths and mastodons,
our giant sloths, all long gone.

by Harlan, age 8

Climb up in an oak tree
Lie down on a branch
Gather lots of leaves
Cover yourself in them
Here I am
In my sweet little bed

by Pedro Campos

Leave the bag, homeless man,
But don’t lose it.
Orbit it, circle it.
You’ve carried the weight already,
It’s heavy, I know.

by Adriana Alcala

i.
There is something about puncturing the tight and airy bubble of your own sadness
with a bike ride that pumps me like a rubber tire full of melancholy this Sunday evening-
One which I pump over pathetic hills to strange observations:

by Henry, age 10

I am from beautiful rivers and dark green forests full of fruit and animals.
I am from the sound of fans cheering Go Blue, whistles blowing, and cars honking.
I am from the smell of freshly-baked Zingerman’s bread.

by JD Waggy

The sky burst open, a popped balloon dumping water with childish hands
onto the unsuspecting city rolling past below–summer rainstorms in Michigan
obey no one.  The whoosh of the full-bellied clouds drowned out the steady

by Paul Bernstein

Seared by the thick
red sorrow of sunsets,
I, stick-shape,  
driven by jukeboxes,

The Huron River at Barton Dam
by Leigh Sugar

     Running into the almost-noon sun just
the angle so my whole face squints
like I am smiling – which I am –

by Emma Behrendt

That janky smoke detector sounds off every time you cook pancakes on a Saturday morning.
And you can only lock the back door if you put your hip into it.
I’ve grown accustomed to hearing the mumbles of your conversations through the French doors and knowing

by Joseph Neely

My wife remembers the boys
chanting his name at school
Reese! Reese!

by Theo Poling

You’re home when
you can find Division Street,
making a straight shot back
through traffic that
could be
worse.

by Shannon Daniels

Again the snow coats everything here,
driving for the first time down Washtenaw.