Overcast Monday

Trees

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always seem to be the same;
To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
Having the appearance of death
With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
One's Being deceptively armored,
One's Becoming deceptively vulnerable;
To be so tough, and to take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden knwledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word –
Poems or people are rarely so lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather than exemplify
What they believe themselves to be about,
While the moving silence of trees,
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf or naked,
Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own.
Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath,
And perilous also - though there has never been
A critical tree - about the nature of things.

by Howard Nemerov