Trees

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree.

Moss on the roots of a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowering breast;

A happy symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi — a.k.a. lichen

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A not so happy lichen hanging onto a tree branch.

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Another moss, this one located on the tree trunk

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

A very happy lichen living on a tree trunk.

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

~Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918)

Scars from woodpecker activity

Dear Friends,

I love this poem, and I want you to love it too. When it was first written, it might have been sentimental. But, now it is incredibly sad because Joyce Kilmer died in France during the Great War (World War I). All the trees there were blown to bits, walking through the trenches he might have been up to his knees in mud and passing rotting bodies or parts of rotting bodies. The fresh, clean air of this poem is vastly different from the gas and smoke filled fields of France where Kilmer died. He had been one of the rising stars in the poetry-literature world, but then the tragic hell of the Great War snuffed out his life, the life of Saki, all but one of JRR Tolkien’s friends, and thousands of others. The beauty of trees is worth contemplating because it is true, “Poetry is for fools like me, but only God can make a tree.”

Pax!

DS