The Branch Delicate

E.B. White, Trees of Winter:

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.

Neil Welliver, Birches