I am Vertical

This month for book club we wanted to try something new, so we challenged ourselves to each memorize a poem or two to present to the group, along with some prepared discussion of these poems. Although I have a good number of poems memorized that I teach again and again (especially Emily Dickinson), I thought I should rather challenge myself by memorizing a poem that does not have a rhythm/rhyme structure, so I can't just rely on that. Thus, here it is, my poem recitation, by Sylvia Plath:

I am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing that I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them -
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once,
And the flowers have time for me.