Sarah D. Silvey

I didn’t write anything last night! Narcolepsy won.

So here is another of my old poems.

 

---

 

I remember the giant old tree

In the courtyard of Trinity college

In Dublin.

It was all gnarls and moss.

It drank hundreds of gallons of water

Which would otherwise have ruined the college’s foundations.

It was clearly alive

A sage of its kind

With character all its own.

I can see how the Britons might fancy

Their trees to have spirits

If they have such trees as that.

 

American trees, Missouri trees especially, are

Young

Scrubby

Sweet

Weak rooted.

American trees don’t know frost or hardship.

They know small things

And think them large.

American trees are children.

They are flexible and joyous and green

And they shake their leaves in laughter

At their wise older cousins.