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Tree Poems Final Version

The document features a collection of poems by various authors, including Adrienne Rich, Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, and W.S. Merwin, all centered around the theme of trees. Each poem explores the emotional and philosophical connections humans have with trees, reflecting on nature, existence, and the passage of time. The poets convey a sense of longing, contemplation, and the importance of nature in understanding one's place in the world.

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22 views5 pages

Tree Poems Final Version

The document features a collection of poems by various authors, including Adrienne Rich, Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, and W.S. Merwin, all centered around the theme of trees. Each poem explores the emotional and philosophical connections humans have with trees, reflecting on nature, existence, and the passage of time. The poets convey a sense of longing, contemplation, and the importance of nature in understanding one's place in the world.

Uploaded by

kunilkumar90
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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TREES OF WEST HARTFORD – The Poetry of Trees

1) Adrienne Rich

What Kind of Times Are These


Adrienne Rich

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light —
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you


anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

2) Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees


Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,


especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,


in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves


and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

Page 1
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

A Dream of Trees
Mary Oliver
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.


But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.


Who ever made music of a mild day?

3) Robert Frost

The Sound of Trees


Robert Frost

I wonder about the trees.


Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,

Page 2
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

Tree at my Window
Robert Frost

Tree at my window, window tree,


My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,


And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,


And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,


Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

4) Seamus Heaney

The Wishing Tree


Seamus Heaney

I thought of her as the wishing tree that died


And saw it lifted, root and branch, to heaven,
Trailing a shower of all that had been driven

Need by need by need into its hale


Sap-wood and bark: coin and pin and nail
Came streaming from it like a comet-tail

Page 3
New-minted and dissolved. I had a vision
Of an airy branch-head rising through damp cloud,
Of turned-up faces where the tree had stood.

Planting the Alder


Seamus Heaney

For the bark, dulled argent, roundly wrapped


And pigeon-collared.

For the splitter-splatter, guttering


Rain-flirt leaves.

For the snub and clot of the first green cones,


Smelted emerald, chlorophyll.

For the scut and scat of cones in winter,


So rattle-skinned, so fossil-brittle.

For the alder wood, flame-red when torn


Branch from branch.

But mostle for the swinging locks


Of yellow catkins.

Plant it, plant it,


Streel-head in the rain.

5) W.S. Merwin

The Names of Trees


W.S. Merwin

Neither my father nor my mother knew


the names of the trees
where I was born
what is that
I asked and my
father and mother did not
hear they did not look where I pointed
surfaces of furniture held
the attention of their fingers
and across the room they could watch
walls they had forgotten
where there were no questions

Page 4
no voices and no shade

Were there trees


where they were children
where I had not been
I asked
were there trees in those places
where my father and my mother were born
and in that time did
my father and my mother see them
and when they said yes it meant
they did not remember
What were they I asked what were they
but both my father and my mother
said they never knew

Place
W.S. Merwin

On the last day of the world


I would want to plant a tree

what for
not the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit


is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands


in the earth for the first time

with the sun already


going down

and the water


touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead


and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves

Page 5

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