When I am Among the TreesWhen I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”I decided today was the day in part because the assigned readings had miffed the three students who had submitted responses - and I suspected the other students hadn't had time to read them at all. The poem triangulates from what was interesting in a peevish Slate review of "the currently popular, everything-is-connected school of tree love" by someone who enjoys the difference of trees on daily walks in the woods and doesn't "expect them to teach [her] anything," and Thomas Merton's reflection on how trees give glory to God by being themselves - but it's not so simple for us sinful human beings.
And we were able to discuss at least some of the issues through the poem. Working almost word by word through it, we noticed lovelinesses like the move from "especially" to "equally" in the second and third lines, and the way the phrases of the final stanza - from the trees - overflow the orderly lines of the poem, cascading like light through a tree's branches. But we spent the most time on the second stanza's account of the life the poet tries to lead, however imperfectly: a life of discerning attention to goodness, anchored in slow walking and frequent bowing (a lovely practice). It's from dejection at her failures to do this consistently that the trees "save" her with their gladness.
This saving seemed deeper than what the peevish Slate reviewer finds on her walks, taken to escape the exasperations of human contact, and less off-putting than Merton's talk of sin. Are Oliver's trees "teaching" her to flee her humanness into some kind of fantasy of arboreal being? It's not that simple. What's simple is the appeal of the repeated invitation to abide with them, not the doing of it.
