Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
I don't know that I ever paid attention to any but the first two lines and the last, if I even encountered them at all, but the poem is quite something. It's not perhaps a great poem, with metaphors pointing all different direction. Is the tree's head "prest" to the ground with its hungry mouth or up where the robins build their nest looking at God (presumably skyward)? A baby or an adult (woman? it has a bosom)? "Intimately liv[ing] with rain" is very sensual.
But the topsy-turvyness fits the remarkably graphic intimacy of Kilmer's tree with earth, sky, birds, rain and snow - and of his Catholic faith. (He converted the same year he wrote "Trees.") Hungrily sucking the earth's breast, these trees are far more passionate than Mary Oliver's, in my go-to religion and trees poem. Oliver's is surely the better poem, but Kilmer's sense of pulsing, needy tree life resonates better with the surging symphony of spring growth around me here.
