So Mary Oliver is wonderful and Joyce Kilmer iconic, but this Robert Frost poem may have been my first tree-love.
The Sound of Trees
I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.
It's especially some of those those middle lines which stayed with me. I've long seen myself in these lines:
They are that that talks of going,
But never gets away.
and long dreamed, without confidence, of one day getting to the point where the next might be true of me too:
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
I guess trees were ideal existences to restless rootless me, choosing to remain in their one place while not limited by it.
