Interior Departments — Summary

Hans Ostrom’s speaker imagines himself as a bureaucrat in charge of leaves, writing memos about “deciduous policy” and brokering compromises between the forest and the trees. It’s a playful setup, but the tone quickly softens. A song rises up from somewhere inside this imaginary ministry—green, calm, insistent, like living leaves in the Amazon. That sound carries him past the rules and categories he has built in his own mind. By the end, he feels promoted “beyond bureaucracies of my own beliefs,” transported to old, uncut forests. The poem moves from mental clutter and official-sounding busyness toward something freer and more elemental. It is whimsical at first, then increasingly serene. The speaker isn’t just talking about trees; he’s describing a kind of inward release, a shift from managing experience to simply listening and being carried by it.