Padma Venkatraman worked as an oceanographer and diversity director before writing Born Behind Bars (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2021), The Bridge Home (Puffin Books, 2020), and A Time to Dance (Penguin Books, 2015), among others.
More By This Poet
Whenever you see a tree
Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to...