Editor’s note: The works of this artist and writer pair are from our Art of Words exhibit, which was on view in the gallery of Follow Your Art Community Studios in September 2022. For this collaborative exhibit, FYACS writers and artists exchanged words and art, prompting each other to respond with something new.
Prompt
“A Tree on Melrose Street”
by Sara Gravante
Response
“Arbor Day of Visitation”
by Cameron Dryden
The Son of Man lamented that people didn’t recognize Greatness in their midst. I make no such claims, for I am a lowly tree. Books won’t be written about what I said. Only at my demise will most even notice me. And yet, I’ve held many occupations.
When you breathe in, I breathe out. When you need succor from sun, wind, or rain, I oblige. When squirrels and chipmunks need a playground or birds lodging for their nests, no one need ask. Rooted beside Ell Pond, Melrose Dog Park, and two schools, I am never alone—nor would I want to be!
You caught me at my most resplendent: twilight, in early fall. The specific year matters not. In the Circle of Life, every year my leaves shed their chlorophyll in a mighty blaze, then give up the ghost. They’ve been my eyes since spring. My roots and branches—which never vanish—are my ears.
Your tiny eardrums detect only sounds that to me are cacophonies—woodpeckers rapping, rumbling trucks, chirping chipmunks. I hear everything: starlings settling down to sleep; munching caterpillars, fleet-footed mice.
I never walk, yet am I not alive? I speak not, but still waters run deep. Just because my senses differ from yours, does that mean I feel nothing? I feel fear each time someone tosses a lit cigarette. I miss honeybees and fireflies, once fecund and numerous as stars, dwindled now to a trickle. I increasingly strain to fulfill my obligations with each passing season, as the climate warms.
You and I, our jobs are different. I’ve said what I do. As a biped, your job is to build things and move them from place to place. Write things down; add things up. You’re tasked with tilling the soil, which means you must keep me vibrant, keep me strong. If you fail, one day you’ll awake and realize only too late the life you missed.
Who am I? I am a tree and the Daughter of Trees.
Prompt
“A Baobab and Sankofa in Melrose“
by Cameron Dryden
The Baobab is Africa’s Tree of Life, earth’s largest succulent. Water retained during the rainy season yields food and water for all living creatures. It feeds all, shelters all, sees all.
After the turbulent 1960s, Melrose leaders partnered with the Metropolitan Council of Educational Opportunity (METCO) to integrate schools and equalize educational opportunities, revitalizing families in Melrose and Boston.
Each Baobab mothers an entire neighborhood. The trees are humongous: 90 feet tall, 150 feet in circumference. A tree in South Africa is so large, 60 people can shelter in the hollow of its trunk.
It not only “takes a village to raise a child,” but the efforts of city leaders, families, and students.
“I have grown to love this school and I am proud to be a part of Melrose High School’s class of 2019.”
Baobab is called the “upside-down tree” because its often-leafless branches look like roots thrust at the sky.
The beauty of inclusion is that its benefits flow up and down—to the ones included, and to the people waving them to step inside.
“From the Melrose perspective, my kids are painfully aware that they’re growing up in a very white community. METCO affords them opportunity to broaden their perspective and diversity. It’s so valuable, it’s hard to put your finger on the value of that. Ours is a great community, but METCO makes it better.”
There are no Baobab plantations—every tree is wild-harvested and community- or family-owned. They’re virtually indestructible, regrowing bark that is stripped or burnt.
Equal opportunity makes us all better, laying the foundation for a more prosperous—and resilient—future.
“Thank you to the teachers who were not afraid to have controversial conversations and to those who wanted to educate us and decrease the achievement gap… Oh, and…MAMA I MADE IT!”
In the branch of the Baobab tree sits a Sankofa bird with its head turned backwards, carrying an egg in its mouth. Sankofa means, “It is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”
Response
“A Baobab and Sankofa in Melrose“
by Sara Gravante
Cameron Dryden is a Writer in Residence at Follow Your Art Community Studios. He is also a graduate of Grubstreet’s Novel Generator and Incubator programs. He’s published in Dead Darlings and received an award in the 2018 Writer’s Digest 88th National Annual Writing Competition. He’s written contemporary parables that he’s shared as a lay preacher at The Italian Home for Children. His blog www.origenes.org/ includes articles on writing craft and a dialogue on race with Sea Stachura, a 2021 Edward R. Murrow Journalism award-winner. Inspired by true events, his current manuscript tells of a 1st-century slave who escapes, travels 1,100 miles to Rome and lives with Christian apostles Paul, Luke, and Timothy.
Sara Gravante is the Gallery Coordinator at Follow Your Community Studios. She is also an Artist in Residence at FYACS and has been teaching artists ages 5 thorough adults for over 7 years, bringing her training as an artist with a BFA from Massachusetts College Art and MFA in painting from Washington University in addition to her experiences as a Senior Graphic Artist in the advertising industry. Her own work shows her passion for color, depicting reality to the abstract in response to the landscape.
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