Saturday's Poem: from Trees by W.S. Merwin

trees

Today I thought I'd post this Merwin poem on trees...whose presence in our lives is indeed worthy of acknowledgement and gratitude.

I grew up on the city streets of Brooklyn but still remember the wonder of looking up into the leafy expanses of their branches while being pushed on a swing in Prospect Park, and I recall with startling specificity the young maple tree on Avenue C that was my special one to monitor through seasons for a school report in second grade, and later there was the oak on Long Island I could see through my bedroom window and in whose shade I sat one summer while reading Jane Eyre. 

Some trees feel individually like friends, while collectively they are witness and chorus and backdrop of our lives, precious beyond measure, and in the words  of Merwin (who of course can say with concise elegance what I might blab about for pages) "one of the things I will miss most from the earth".

Trees

I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from the earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches