tree poems

a little spring poetree

~ jama ~ 40 Comments

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

It’s spring, it’s spring! At last, at last!

We must celebrate, of course.

The robins have returned from their winter vacations and our daffodils are showing off their cheery yellow bonnets. But to me the most dramatic part of the spring show is when the dogwoods bloom and the trees green up. One day, tiny little buds on bare branches, and the next, a rejuvenating leafy canopy. Somehow, this sudden transformation always takes me by surprise. No matter what kind of winter we’ve had, the leaves always come back, truly nature’s gift of hope.

“Dogwood Tree” by Peggy Davis.

Today I’m happy to share three poems from Allie Esiri’s anthology, A Poem for Every Spring Day (Macmillan Children’s Books, 2021). John Agard’s charming poem features a tree’s point of view, Larkin pauses to reflect on spring’s promise, and the way Nesbit whimsically personifies different tree species is sheer delight. They’re all a welcome balm after the cold, a good way to celebrate this season of growth and renewal.

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“Happy Tree” by Mary Price (acrylic on canvas, 2020).
A DATE WITH SPRING
by John Agard

Got a date with spring
Got to look me best.
Of all the trees
I’ll be the smartest dressed.

Perfumed breeze
behind me ear.
Pollen accessories
all in place.

Raindrop moisturizer
for me face,
Sunlight tints
to spruce up the hair.

What’s the good of being a tree
if you can’t flaunt your beauty?

Winter, I was naked
Exposed as can be.
Me wardrobe took off
with the wind.

Life was a frosty slumber.
Now, spring here I come.
Can’t wait to slip in
to me little green number.

~ Copyright © 1983 by John Agard.

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friday feast: good times at the frost place

~ jama ~ 29 Comments

“Come over the hills and far with me and be my love in the rain.”

So here’s the view from the upstairs bedroom window at The Frost Place in Franconia. When I first read “The Road Not Taken” as a student eons ago, I hadn’t the faintest inkling where the poet might have lived when he wrote it — indeed, I knew nothing about New Hampshire, period.

As fate would have it, this Hawai’i girl met her husband, a New Hampshire native, in London, England, and since then, we’ve visited many poets’ and writers’ homes on both sides of the pond. It’s always a wonderful moment when you finally get to see where a writer you’ve long admired actually lived. All at once he becomes a real person, and if you listen carefully you can hear whisperings from the past, as you gaze at the view that may very well have inspired a poem or two.

“I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Frost lived here full time between 1915-1920, then summered here until 1938. Unlike his ten-year sojourn at Derry Farm (a period of unsuccessful farming and meager publication), by the time Frost inhabited this modest farmhouse his literary reputation was well established. He had just returned from England where his first two books (A Boy’s Will, North to Boston) had finally earned him the professional esteem he so earnestly sought and deserved.

The orange daylilies were in full bloom on that Friday in July when we happened upon the rusty mailbox on Ridge Road.

I sat on the porch rejuvenated by the clean fresh air, the silence broken only by occasional birdsong and the buzzing of determined bees. No wonder Frost loved it here!

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