Dayna Patterson

During the pandemic, I found it critical for my mental health to go for daily walks, no matter my schedule. I began to pay deeper attention to the small changes in my surroundings: the slow unfurling of leaves in spring, the random appearance of mushrooms by the roadside after a good rain. I always felt better after these walks, and I started to appreciate more how much the earth heals and sustains us, coupled with an urgency to care for our planet and make art that will connect people to each other and the environment. 

I wrote “Sylvia’s Trees” after reading Heather Clark’s extraordinary biography of Plath, Red Comet. I was delighted and astonished to learn that she had six laburnum at her home in England, Court Green, and that these were her favorite trees; there is a laburnum in my front yard as well, the “banana tree,” as my kids call it, because the little yellow flowers look like tiny bunches of bananas. We tend to think of Plath and her poetry through the tragic lens of her ultimate suicide, but as Clark helped me see, she is so much more. I love this view of Sylvia as a striving writer, mother, and avid gardener. 

As we face the imminent threat of ecological catastrophe, I channel my eco-anxiety into making art that I hope will inspire increased attentiveness to the world’s abundant wonder, from mushroom clusters to spring buds, knowing we can’t save what we don’t love.