an essay on baobab trees by Lee Patterson

there is only 1 blockbuster video & I don’t know how many baobab trees left in the world. I weep for the loss of my future children who will never learn to be kind by rewinding. I have seen more blockbuster video stores than skies, but I have never seen a baobab tree. I am embarrassed for not knowing what a baobab tree looks like, so I google baobab tree. They’re bark glows a sheen in the sun; their leaves are unreachable for anything that isn’t a giraffe. I learn that boabab ash is used for fertilizer & in making soap. I learn that 9 of africa’s 13 oldest baobab trees have died in the last decade. something about the heater we have pressed against the earth. an article tells me the “tree of life” is dying. someone should buy all the fertilizer from the home depot, call the police, an air conditioner repair guy. what I am wondering is, how hard is it to turn on a sprinkler?

Lee Patterson‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ethel Zine, The Airgonaut, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Flash Flood, among others. His chappook, I get sad, is forthcoming from Ethel Zine in late 2019.

Photo by ANTONI SOCIAS