Saturday, May 26, 2007

Some Trees


Some Trees

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.

Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there

Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving

Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

John Ashbery

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