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.




"Some Trees" by John Ashbery from Some Trees. Copyright © 1956, 1970, 1978, 1997, 2008 by John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author's estate