Trees are often used as metaphors for people. One of the best examples is in Rush’s “The Trees” where the Canadian prog rock band rips apart the Communist agenda in the simplest of terms (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnC88xBPkkc). Another example is the much lighter (but still substantial) poem “Some Trees” by John Ashbery. Here, the speaker sits on a park bench in winter looking out at some trees and draws comparisons between them and the relationships he observes between people. He sees the trees as having something to share about the way we should live our lives. They are quietly in union with one another, in an intimate but loving relationship, filled with hope that they will continue to grow together. Ashbery sees them as a blueprint for humans. They were here before us, living in a beautiful, simpler world. They are content with their existence because each moment is meaningful to the trees. In our busy lives, it is nature which has been here the longest of all that can provide brightness we need to get through the day. This is echoed in the closing lines, “Our days put on such reticence/These accents seem their own defense.” When i read all of these beautiful words, I think of the snow anointed trees of Rochester, NY, birthplace of Ashbery and my own parents’ hometown. It is a place I have visited many a time, and knowing that the poet could look out on the scenery there and make beautiful discoveries about life fills me with joy.
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
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