Poems of the Week

Threnody for a Throwaway Thneed

by Julia Griffin

“Real-Life Truffula Tree Said To Have Inspired ‘The Lorax’ by Dr. Seuss Falls”
HuffPost

The very first Truffula Tree, so they say,
Has fallen this week in La Jolla, CA.

The very first Truffula! Why did it fall?
And why had the public heard nothing at all
Of this very important symbolical tree?
Try asking the Lorax or Once-ler, not me.

Yet this much I know: as the news travels on,
We’ll hear a salute from a smogged Swomee Swan,
And a hail from a Humming Fish—both in cahoots
With that Seussian troubadour, Light’s Bar-b[ar]a Loots. *

* Though Barbara Loots’s last name actually rhymes with “boats,” we couldn’t resist this one. — The Editors