Day 6 #Napowrimo - Dragon Tree Writes a Letter to Bosch

This was a fun prompt to write. Today we were instructed to view Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights and write in the viewpoint of one of the inhabitants. I chose the Dragon Tree.

The Dragon Tree: Bosch

Dragon Tree Writes a Letter to Bosch

I am too old to correct what cannot be undone,

but I know you never sat beneath my shade, not

with your lush landscapes, your hair smelling

of rain-soaked land and your privileged feet

that have walked on dew drop grass.

I place my roots not in the garden of Eden,

but in the beige landscapes of fire and heat.

I dig myself between boulders and dust,

my branches, like your fleshy arms, reach up

to touch the vast, blue skies. My fronds

point like fingers at each planet and star.

I’ve never needed rain or paradise. I need

the long days of desert and the company

of wind. You covered me in grapevines

and painted me next to an orchard of mandarin.

I am the alpha, the lone one; I move time.

This lush portrait, a form of betrayal.

I am forever stilled in your image,

my shade cast upon your Adam and your Eve,

their nakedness a different kind of bark,

and the bird eating frog, cat eating lizard,

fish reading book, the three headed bird;

all of them a chaos that cannot be governed,

not with your foolish mouth, or your arrogant

hand. Your brush is not god’s tool, your paint

not your holy book or daily worship; you stand

as if you created them from the clay,

but I am the life tree, I am the reason you breathe.