Every now and then, affection shows up wearing bark and leaves. Today was one of those days.
Did You Really Think This Was About Trees?
Poetry by Rowan Evans
Birch, I’m in a mood—
but I’m feelin’ pretty Oak today,
oops, I mean, a-o-k—
especially with my Rose Wood beside me,
open my eyes, so I could Cedar—
her fingers in my hair,
like the breeze through the leaves.
Did you really think
this was about trees?
It’s just me and her
by the summer seas,
just us with Palms in the sand—
castle and a plot of land,
where she is royalty—
a Queendom built
off the back of loyalty.
And that’s something I don’t lack,
I got it in stacks—packed to the rafters,
stick with me and you’ll have a life full of laughter—
you’ll never get board like a lumberyard,
and I work hard—
to prove my words have meaning,
even when they are weird
or absurdist leaning.
Author’s Note
Sometimes I write a poem because I have something profound to say.
Sometimes I write one because my brain looked at a bunch of tree names and apparently decided they needed to become flirting material.
This is the latter.
Did You Really Think This Was About Trees? is a deliberately ridiculous little love poem built almost entirely around wordplay. Birch, oak, rosewood, cedar, palms, lumberyards, boards—I’m taking language that belongs to the world of trees and woodworking and forcing it into a completely different emotional landscape.
And yes, the title is absolutely part of the joke.
The poem starts by making the reader think they’re about to get some sort of nature poem. Then I reveal that the trees were never really the subject.
The subject was her.
The forest is just the camouflage.
I also wanted the poem to feel conversational and slightly chaotic. The little correction from “Oak” to “a-o-k,” the exaggerated promises, the lumberyard imagery, and the final admission that the whole thing is leaning toward absurdism are all intentional.
There is something freeing about allowing a love poem to be stupidly playful.
Not every expression of affection needs to be solemn.
Sometimes love looks like poetry.
Sometimes it looks like devotion.
And sometimes it looks like spending an entire poem making increasingly terrible tree puns because you love someone enough to make yourself laugh while writing about them.
Honestly, I’ll take all three.
— Rowan Evans
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Blended Hardware]
A playful, absurdist poem where step-ladders, garden hoses, Star Wars, teenage memories, Gothic imagery, and the poet’s own self-interrupting commentary collide. Blended Hardware is a celebration of letting language wander.
If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]
Poetry by Rowan Evans 