What is your purpose?
Why are you here?
Is your reason for being
The way you appear?
Are you evergreen
Like the spruce or the pine?
With prickly sharp needles
And a prickly sharp mind?
Are you more like the maple
Whose leaves in the fall
Provide color and beauty
To one and to all?
Are you like the cactus
Whose leaves are like spines
Protecting the plant
From the dangerous kinds?
Are you a leaf that provides
Comfort, safety, or food?
Just find your purpose
To be understood.
e-Quips 
I’m just a human whose purpose is small. To actually know nothing but pretend to know all. Great poem.
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Like your answer in the form of a poem also.
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Nicely said.:-)
I think sometimes I’m a cactus and hopefully sometimes a maple, just all depends on what’s going on in my life!
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Love your riff on bloom where you are planted, whenever you can determine what kind of plant that might be. Thanks for answering.
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Great poem. I especially like stanza three.
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Thanks! Glad you like it.
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Delightful poem
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I struggle with being too much like the cactus, I suppose. Thought-provoking poem!
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Thanks. I need to think of more leaf types for additional stanzas.
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A wonderfully written poem great photography with a clever title. After reading this perhaps people will quit raking themselves over the coals.
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Lovely thought, Mr. Mel. I sure hope so.
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One of my favorite literary characters is Hardy’s Gabriel Oak. His name matched his character
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Oak leaf, hanging in there until the end. Great idea for the next stanza. Thanks, Denzil.
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Lovely poem Pat, great metaphors for life.
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Thanks, Andrea.
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[…] of words that end in fast like breakfast or steadfast.) The uneven cadence in some poems like Be Leaf in Yourself were highlighted with re-write. Everyone had a differing opinion on whether a poem had some or no […]
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