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 to always seem the same;

to be steady as a rock and always trembling,

having the hard 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 knowledge

Of so many things of 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 from the moving silence of trees,

Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,

Night and 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.

Howard Nemerov