The Sunday Poem: If Trees Did Not Stop Growing
We spent some time today at the park at a Cub Scout event, and I fell asleep on our blanket on the grass, staring up at the maze of intersecting branches, and at the smooth-trunked trees that vaulted to the blue. I was struck by how alike the grasses were, the same shapes and forks and blind reaching for the sun, the way that the water grasses arching over the little stream were hiding tadpoles from my glance, and the way the bigger boughs made the sun dart in and out like flashing flickers on a fish – was something watching us?
It made me think, if trees are just huge grass, then what grows huger still?
If Trees Did Not Stop Growing
The trees are dense with cellulose,
are grasses overgrown. They fork
the sky, they prize the stratosphere
And if they got there, what?
Leaves freeze & cause a late-fall snow
The jet stream buffets branches, snap!
Planes would dodge and fearful birds would fly
their nests grown far too high
Beyond, the stars, the dark, the places
no trees know, the airless empty, bright
the beeping satellites, the sight of meteorites
that risk their crowns afire
Upper reaches made of silver
Treehouses of gold
Brittle twigs and filigree
swaying in the cold
The green forgot
the sun a harsh unending glare
One beauty traded to another
buds that cannot bear
From the moon, the Earth a feathered ball
a-bristle with the tall, the trees that reached
and sought, the trees that got beyond
Where Mother Nature never got
7 Responses to “The Sunday Poem: If Trees Did Not Stop Growing”
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People don’t talk like that anymore, Raph. 🙂
Yes we do.
Just not in public.
Honestly Raph, I’m not sure if I found the introspection or the poem itself more evocative. You certainly have a way with words 🙂
Maybe Morgan, but when lyrics were more like that, songwriting was a helluva lot better than the chump-chica-chock-chock we get in today’s generation of songs.
There is a cycle to the trends of subtlety and complexity in pop art. The sixties songwriters were brilliant. The 90s songwriters sucked so bad you could hear their sphincters blowing out the backwash. Things are a bit better these days but a bit 30ish or wanker.
The harshest fate is to produce quality in an era of garage bands.
I was adapting two or three lines from National Treasure and the sequel…
Aha. I saw the NT sequel a few weeks ago. It didn’t make much impression. I saw Indiana Jones last weekend. Age is not kind. It reminds me of what Grace Slick said about old people playing rock: it looks funny. Good action flick. Great CGI.
You just had to look in the right places. The Boston scene was excellent during that time period.