Tuesday, September 09, 2008
The Branch Delicate
E.B. White, Trees of Winter:
Neil Welliver, Birches
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Oh, they are lovely trees that wait
In the still hall of winter,
Silent and good where the Good Planter
Fixed the root, wove the branch delicate.
Friendly the birches in the thin light
By the frost sanctified,
And here, too, silent by their side
I stand in the woods, listening, upright,
Hearing in the cold of the long pause
Of the full year
What trees intend that I should hear:
Interpretations of old laws...
Hearing the faint, the chickadee cry
Of root that molders,
Of branch bent, and leaf that withers
And little brown seed that does not die.
