No one can convince me
that the oak has no memory.
Whenever I’m willing to listen,
it reminisces about winds
that shook its confidence
before I was born,
saturating rains I can’t imagine,
and droughts worse than this one.
The trick is to translate
murmurs and creaks of sap and solid wood
into dialects of blood and bone,
the cackling of neurons we call thought.
But the birds gossiping among its leaves
have no interest
in how much time it took
or what the oak had to endure
to make the shade
that shelters them in in the hot afternoon.
Now will always be enough for them.
—Don E. Thompson
In A Journal of the Drought Year ©2016,
Encircle Publications, LLC, Farmington, Maine, USA
Don Thompson, Kern County’s first Poet Laureate, was born and raised in Bakersfield, and has lived in the southern San Joaquin Valley for most of his life. In his term as Poet Laureate, he has held readings, given presentations, and promoted poetry throughout the county. During National Poetry Month 2018, he will present at the Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting (April 10) and the Bakersfield City Council meeting (April 11).