Galut ha’dibbur

On September 25th, I attended a generative writing workshop focused on Plant Poetry, hosted by the local poetry center and my city’s botanical garden. I ended up combining two prompts (Haikus in the Japanese Garden, stanzas 1 and 3; a “personifying trees” exercise - I chose witch hazel - in the Woodland Garden, stanza 2, in blank verse). Additionally, this poem was partially inspired by the introduction to Avivah Gottleib Zornberg’s “Moses: A Human Life.”

“Galut ha’dibbur” means “Exile of the word.”