Poem VI · Free verse · 2023
Trees
I observe the trees in the wind,
lofty, perpetual,
swaying in slow measure.
Where the world is in transit
and chasing after time,
they hold a steadfast rooting.
Serene, they inhabit the earth
while the sky is courted
by the vain reflections of man.
I watch the branches play
the music of the sea,
rejoicing, weeping, thundering,
and ever to their stillness returning.
A thousand seeds and more it took
once, for me to notice today
the vital green of their crowns,
bringing back to my mind
thoughts of childhood
and the scents of the seasons.
I observe the trees in motion
and of a sudden
I recover every sense:
I remember who I am
and what the world is,
I feel the flow of time;
I know that—come joy or torment—
they will continue
to move in the wind.
Author's note
The setting is a large city, skyscrapers all around: the trees move slowly amid the human frenzy, and the contrast is immediate. On one side, the chase after time; on the other, a steadfast rooting that needs no justification. The "vain reflections of man" courting the sky are the glass facades of skyscrapers, but also man seeing himself mirrored in the heavens: the dream of rising to the divine, which here looks more like vanity than conquest.
Nature is not a backdrop: it is a living being that rejoices, weeps, thunders. It has an empathy that perhaps surpasses our own, and a silent industriousness. "A thousand seeds and more it took": centuries of evolution buried in every green crown, an effort that man barely notices, too busy chasing his own reflection.
But the heart of the poem is in the third stanza, in the return to the self. Watching the trees restores every lost sense: who I am, what the world is, how time flows. And the deepest consolation arrives: that it does not matter whether one is happy or in torment, young or nearing the end. Nature is beyond man, it will outlast him, and it will continue to offer its warmth to anyone who stops to look. Our sufferings are put in perspective before something that precedes and surpasses us, with the quiet constancy of that which has no need of us to exist.