Trees Poetry

• Dogwood
  

  In the wind the dogwoods bend,
  an osculation of branch and bud.

  Four ivory bracts lined like foreheads,
  thin as skin and scent of sky.

  Under the cobalt vault of night
  they radiate like prayers: a rictus

  in the darkness, they are cool
  as Buddhism, ethereal as cumulus.

  Sentinels of my window, they
  absorb the moons mist-white light

  bounce it back to the sky
  like a thousand tin tops,

  an inversion of stars.

  
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• Maples
  

  Leaves of fiery scarlet
  reflect a crisp sun

  rustle in a healthy mass
  of autumn laughter

  house an anarchy of crows
  that screech at winters approach

  until bare branches
  balance snow

  on slender
  outstretched arms

  
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• The Shapes Of Leaves
  

  Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree:
  our emotions resemble leaves and alive
  to their shapes we are nourished.

  Have you felt the expanse and contours of grief
  along the edges of a big Norway maple?
  Have you winced at the orange flare

  searing the curves of a curling dogwood?
  I have seen from the air logged islands,
  each with a network of branching gravel roads,

  and felt a moment of pure anger, aspen gold.
  I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field,
  a single white whooping crane in the flock.

  And I have traveled along the contours
  of leaves that have no name. Here
  where the air is wet and the light is cool,

  I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
  I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
  I am living at the edge of a new leaf.

  
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• The Leaf And The Tree
  

  When will you learn, myself, to be
  a dying leaf on a living tree?
  Budding, swelling, growing strong,
  Wearing green, but not for long,
  Drawing sustenance from air,
  That other leaves, and you not there,
  May bud, and at the autumn's call
  Wearing russet, ready to fall?
  Has not this trunk a deed to do
  Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
  Shall not these branches in the end
  To wisdom and the truth ascend?
  And the great lightning plunging by
  Look sidewise with a golden eye
  To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
  It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?

  Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
  The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
  Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
  And stands; but in the end comes down.
  That airy top no boy could climb
  Is trodden in a little time
  By cattle on their way to drink.
  The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,
  That hears the wind and waits its turn,
  Have taught it all a tree can learn.
  Time can make soft that iron wood.
  The tallest trunk that ever stood,
  In time, without a dream to keep,
  Crawls in beside the root to sleep.

  
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• Lost
  Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
  Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
  And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
  Must ask permission to know it and be known.
  The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
  I have made this place around you,
  If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
  No two trees are the same to Raven.
  No two branches are the same to Wren.
  If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
  You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
  Where you are. You must let it find you.
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• No Boundaries
  

  We ran, breathless to the forests'
  full shadowed beauty.
  Reached trancelike lips toward lips
  no trace of breath to break the magic.
  Pungent crackling leaves encircled
  lingering little limbs discovered
  heartbeats soaring towards each other.

  There beneath tall timber
  we melted, merged, meandered
  with no particular destination
  and treetops brushed our hair.

  When I grew up, I wanted
  to marry the trees.
  but I forgot how.

  
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• Leaves Before The Wind
  

  We have walked, looked at the actual trees:
  The chesnut leaves wide-open like a hand,
  The beech leaves bronzing under every breeze,
  We have felt flowing through our knees

  As if we were the wind.

  We have sat silent when two horses came,
  Jangling their harness, to mow the long grass.
  We have sat long and never found a name
  For this suspension in the heart of flame

  That does not pass.

  We have said nothing; we have parted often,
  Not looking back, as if departure took
  An absolute of will--once not again
  (But this is each day's feat, as when

  The heart first shook).

  Where fervor opens every instant so,
  There is no instant that is not a curve,
  And we are always coming as we go;
  We lean toward the meeting that will show

  Love's very nerve.

  And so exposed (O leaves before the wind!)
  We bear this flowing fire, forever free,
  And learn through devious paths to find
  The whole, the center, and perhaps unbind

  The mystery

  Where there are no roots, only fervent leaves,
  Nourished on meditations and the air,
  Where all that comes is also all that leaves,
  And every hope compassionately lives

  Close to despair.

  
  In Trees - 115 days ago
• Birches
  When I see birches bend to left and right
  Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
  I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
  But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
  Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
  Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
  After a rain. They click upon themselves
  As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
  As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
  Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
  Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
  Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
  You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
  They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
  And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
  So low for long, they never right themselves:
  You may see their trunks arching in the woods
  Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
  Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
  Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
  But I was going to say when Truth broke in
  With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
  I should prefer to have some boy bend them
  As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
  Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
  Whose only play was what he found himself,
  Summer or winter, and could play alone.
  One by one he subdued his father's trees
  By riding them down over and over again
  Until he took the stiffness out of them,
  And not one but hung limp, not one was left
  For him to conquer. He learned all there was
  To learn about not launching out too soon
  And so not carrying the tree away
  Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
  To the top branches, climbing carefully
  With the same pains you use to fill a cup
  Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
  Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
  Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
  So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
  And so I dream of going back to be.
  It's when I'm weary of considerations,
  And life is too much like a pathless wood
  Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
  Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
  From a twig's having lashed across it open.
  I'd like to get away from earth awhile
  And then come back to it and begin over.
  May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
  And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
  Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
  I don't know where it's likely to go better.
  I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
  And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
  Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
  But dipped its top and set me down again.
  That would be good both going and coming back.
  One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
  In Trees - 115 days ago