[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]


decorating the palm trees

my mother
always started trends
in our neighborhood

take christmas,
for example:

one christmas
in addition to decorating
the tree we had inside,
she took italian lights

and strung them along
each branch of the
palm tree in front of
our house

dad even put me in the
bucket of the tractor
so i could reach

next year,
a few more houses with
palm trees decorated

the year after,
more than half the houses

then she bought
ornaments for her tree,
big, round,
foot-wide
ornaments

next year,
a few more houses
had ornaments

the year after,
more than half the houses

my mother
was always the first


Copyright Janet Kuypers.
All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.

video videonot yet rated
Watch the YouTube video
Published in her book Close Cover Before Striking, read (for future audio CD release) 06/28/11 on WZRD radio, from the mini camera
video videonot yet rated

See feature-length YouTube
video 06/26/11 of ~45 minutes of the WZRD radio show with her reading poetry (including this poem) from the mini cam


the book Close Cover Before Striking the book The Beauty and the Destruction