Most poems about trees reach for blossoms, shade or the green drama of leaves. William Frederick Waersen's "Tree Bark" chooses the least flattering part of the tree and makes us look at it anyway. The speaker starts as a doubter, convinced the bark is ugly, and is slowly talked out of that view by the evidence. The central idea is that worth isn't settled by appearance. A rough, aged surface can matter to others, and being valued can give something battered a reason to go on.
The poem is built as an argument that changes direction. Its five stanzas are loose free verse with no regular rhyme scheme. The one real rhyme comes at the very start, in "Rough and tough," and it suits the subject, since the words are as blunt as the bark. The opening stanza defines the bark only by what it lacks: "not even remotely pleasant," "not beautiful to the eye." The second stanza turns to a question ("So why? / Why do all these crearures like it?"), and the speaker's logic is revealing: "I don't see it's beauty, / So how could they?" He assumes his own eye is the standard everyone else must meet. The poem is quoted here as written.
The longest stanza, six lines, is where the speaker's view widens, and the senses shift from sight to touch. Cats purr "When it kindly caresses them," and some humans "trace their fingers, / Along this ugly exterior." The word "ugly" is the harshest in the poem, but it is immediately undercut by the next two lines: "Not discusted or repulsed, / But instead courious and amazed." These lines reverse the pattern of the first stanza. There, "not" pushed the bark away. Here, "not" pushes disgust away and leaves room for wonder. The roughness the eye objects to is exactly what hands and fur meet, and the poem suggests that touch knows something sight doesn't. The phrase "kindly caresses" also makes the bark an active giver, not just something looked at.
The fourth stanza turns the bark into a character. "That tre bark has gone through hell" is a flat, colloquial line, the speaker's verdict after his change of mind. "It isn't young, nor is it smooth" lists its flaws without apology. Then comes the poem's most interesting move: "as it sees all the kind hearts, / It can't help but smile." The speaker couldn't see beauty with his eyes, so the poem gives eyes to the bark, and what it sees is kindness. The word "kind" returns here after "kindly" in the previous stanza, linking the touchers to the tree. The stanza invites a reading beyond trees, since "gone through hell" and "isn't young" sound like things said about people. The poem never says so, though.
The last stanza is quiet. "A little smither of hope" (the word seems to be a variant of "smidgen" or "smithereens") makes the hope small and tentative, not triumphant. It is "Returning to it's worn roots," which moves the poem from the outer bark to the hidden parts of the tree. "Returning" implies hope was there once, and "worn" echoes the earlier "Broken and torn." The final line, "Has found a reason to be for," ends on a dangling "for." That could be a slip, but it also leaves the sentence open, and it is tempting to read the reason as being for the kind hearts who touched the bark.
What makes the poem worth reading is its modesty and its honesty about prejudice. It doesn't open by announcing that ugliness is secretly beautiful. It lets the speaker be wrong, then lets cats and curious fingers correct him. The "I" disappears after the second stanza, as if the speaker has stepped aside to let the bark have the last word. In this poem beauty is something that happens between a surface and the people who are gentle with it, and the bark is not failing to be beautiful.