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Carl Sandburg
The dancing girls here . . . after a long night of
it ...
The long beautiful night of the wind and rain in April,
The long night hanging down from the drooping
branches of the top of a birch tree,
Swinging, swaying, to the wind for a partner, to the
rain for a partner.
What is the humming, swishing thing they sing in
the morning now?
The rain, the wind, the swishing whispers of the long
slim curve so little and so dark on the western
morning sky . . . these dancing girls here on an
April early morning . . .
They have had a long cool beautiful night of it with
their partners learning this year's song of April.
night gains all
the branches
of my body
as small and intricate
as any clock
With some trees, the knotholes
are among the last things to go.
You can find them staring up
from the ground, eye sockets
that never belonged to a skull.
It makes sense that trees would grow
their hardest wood around the weakest
points in their architecture.
This is called the branch collar,
& it is woven with wood
first from the branch
as it overlaps onto the trunk
& then from the trunk
as it overlaps onto the branch.
Behind the collar, in the parent
trunk or limb, the branch core forms:
The squirrel says: the trees
in which I have slept
are the color of the sun.
Leafless now and clear
all likely pathways. The tree peers
bleary-eyed through every scar
that used to be a leaf,
she is stiff and cold
and full of old voices.
I rub my face and neck against
her bark: wake up!
My tail trembles.
I am rainwater running
up and down the trunk,
from tree to tree I am wind
leaping, making the treetops sway.
Oh how beautiful
The leaves a bright green
Branches like fingers reaching
To touch and scratch and claw
Their beauty astonishes me.
Oh how I wish I were one
So free
So free
To do
What I
Please
Free
Free
Free
Now we stopped looking
to be excused. You
have said it.
You who shrug
the flesh, for
all it's worth.
Woman: stroked
to a fine
cross-hatched plan.
The guts of it!
to take each
thread and loose it.
I can take
the grabbing vines
and slapping branches.
But this!
Red hued coloured skies
The bronze horizons twinkle
Skeletal branches
Although your roots are weak and small
And only visible to the left
Your grew strong proud and tall
With a heart so big so red
Who knows who the father is
The seed that made you grow
Sometimes you wish to see his face
The face you don't even know
Swiftly leaves and branches fall
Another life another year
But yet your still stand brave and tall
Like a tree with out a fear
Fingers
Fingers
Hundreds of fingers
Black
Clutching—
Leafless branches of trees
Projected against
A blue-gray sky.
Fingers grasp
At the silver-spun dress
Of the moon-goddess
As she lazily passes
Leafless branches of April trees.
one, two, three crows
walk a branch
There are three ancient oaks,
That grow near to each other.
They lift their branches
High as beckoning
With outstretched arms,
For some one to come and stand
Under the canopy of their leaves.
Once long ago I remember
As I lay in the very centre,
Between them:
A rotten branch suddenly fell
Near to me.
I will not go back to those oaks:
Their branches are too black for my liking.
Under the linden branches
They sit and whisper;
Hardly a quiver
Of leaves, hardly a lisp or
Sigh in the air.
Under the linden branches
They sit, and shiver
At the slow air's fingers
Drawn through the linden branches
Where the year's sweet lingers;
And sudden avalanches
Of memories, fears,
Shake from the linden branches
Upon them sitting
With hardly a sigh or a whisper
Or quiver of tears.