By: Marcus W. 7th Grader, CA (Feb, 2025)
Redwoods
Towering spires – resting in the Forest –
Tranquil in the morning dew –
Neighboring – beside winding trails.
Wavy and bony bark –
Mighty roots, embedded and plowing into soil.
Green canopies – in the sky.
Guardians of the woodland Jungle –
Sheltering other flora and fauna –
Sheltering the Remains of the fallen ones.
Thriving, adapting to changes.
Shade from the Heat of daylight.
Lively as the day unfolds.
Artist Statement
In this poem, I took influence from Emily Dickinson’s poems as I referenced some of her
stylistic choices, such as enjambment, capitalization, and punctuation into my own writing. I put
dashes between sentences where there should not have been, and capitalized nouns to put stress
on them. Some verses end with a dash and do not have proper punctuation. I also added a bit of
anaphora. In my writing, I used stylistic traits from Walt Whitman, such as writing the poem in
free verse. His poems have no specific rhyme scheme.
Enjambment, a characteristic I added, impacts the reader’s pace when reading. It breaks the
sentence into parts, and acts as a comma, slowing the reader down. Adding anaphora into my
writing made it have a sense of repetitiveness and rhythm.