If you haven't heard the robin's dawn song
You're a poorer man than you ought to be.
Up early once, by a small factory
Alongside which an elm tree was growing
Vibrantly in one of its early springs
With about two hundred heart-shaped leaves
Green as if it had just invented them;
I heard and saw a robin in the tree
Emit I'll swear in one protracted chord
With not a one I could label discord,
A note for every new leaf on that tree,
As if each leaf issued another leaf
Of spiritual stuff, metallic as well;
Brilliantly shone, etched with one perfect word.
Every evening the trees inhale birds
Swirling back home a warm shawl
But I still wait for my perch in your arms
I would peg so lightly the sheets of your night flights
We would travel in one mind your old lands my new skies
And every morning you would breathe me fly
It is the most boring number—
a thin, sour preacher flagging
in the second hour of an August sermon,
an enraged father pounding on an anvil.
It is priapic but sterile, one tree
remaining after clear-cut.
“One” wakes up drunk, snarls
at the television. “One” demands
compliance and calls it consensus.
“One” complies. “One” is the arrow
that killed the crow.
Ripple-skiffed by bird and stone
Tree is held in dark-water
The flowers fight up.
Thistledown woven
spider-net
abandoned nest
a cup
upturned
under the wrong tree
light as breath
hedge-fallen
gloveback
nature retrieves
her mess of twigs
grasses
meticulously
bit-by-bit
In wind
In liquid air.
An old tree hangs over our dirt driveway so that it brushes our car as we drive past. Last year,
our first year in this country house, I admired its blooming. This year the gardener says it is
leaning because some of its roots have worn away.
wet apple blossoms
on the dark branches
on the dark earth
Dead night. The wood resounds with cries.
Abandoned child, I think.
I rush into the thicket, find a path.
My eye expands into the moonless dark.
Wet from the rain-filled leaves upturned
In my run, I find the source:
On a mound where six markers neatly grew,
A tree had crashed upon an infant’s grave.
To become tree-man,
Oh, songs given back by the winds !
What joy of no-man.
With secrets in their eyes the blue-winged Hours
Rustle through the meadow
Dropping shadow.
Yawning among red flowers,
The Moon Child with her golden hoop
And a pink star drifting after,
Leans to me where I droop.
I hear her delicate, soft laughter,
And through my hair her tiny fingers creep. . . .
I shall sleep.
Musician, give a voice to me!
Oh quicken wood and string,
Unburden me of ecstasy,
For I have songs to sing!
Of faces forward through dark rains,
Of torn but valiant feet,
Of blood that runs in shrinking veins,
Of broken hearts that beat.
Of crooked boughs that have kept true
The promise to fulfill,
Of thwarted roots that yet pursue
Their purpose in the hill.
Oh all you safe and smooth of heart
Listen to song from me,
Whose wooden throat was once a part
Of the north side of a tree!
Life gave me these —
The beauty that can only branch in trees
Who are content, knowing the roots' securities —
The strength to stand up straight and bear the wings
Of a brave ship on her adventurings —
The bitterness of being broken, being tossed
And driven on the waters and the winds, and lost
In desolation, mist and stinging foam,
And being beaten back at last to home.
Now love has kindled me —
Strange that my beauty of a dear, green tree
Should vanish into smoke and memory.
Strange that the strength, magnificently mine.
Should fall before the flame without a sign.
But oh most strange that bitterness should be
Drawn up in color after color out of me.
All the time they were praying
He watched the shadow of a tree
Flicker on the wall.
There is no need of prayer,
He said,
No need at all.
The kin-folk thought it strange
That he should ask them from a dying bed.
But they left all in a row
And it seemed to ease him
To see them go.
There were some who kept on praying
In a room across the hall
And some who listened to the breeze
That made the shadows waver
On the wall.