They rise above us, arching, spreading, thin
Where trunk and bough give way to veining twig.
We cannot find the place their lives begin,
But know it spreads beneath us in the deep,
Where grubs and earwigs curl and earthworms dig,
Where milky wings enfold a decade’s sleep.
We live beneath their verdant canopies;
They frame our world and hold the earth in place.
Even the sylvan darkness no one sees
Pulsates its omens for the mind to fear,
And, when the boys, with faces flushing, race
Across dry fields, their goal and rest lie here.
So it was, too, with me, when, as a child,
I clambered up the neighbors’ hulking oak,
Ascending bough by bough within the wild
Refuge of stirring leaves; and there I stayed,
Listening to the branches as they spoke
And looking down on bright lawns ringed with shade.
—James Matthew Wilson
