The branches looked first like tepees, but there was no emptiness. Like piles of leaves waiting for fire: at the foot of the wisewoman trees, at the foot of the broken General, next to the tree of the veteran girl who died this summer       slow red cloth

Copyright © 2009 by Jean Valentine. Originally published in The Nation. Used by permission of the author.

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Poems by This Author

Annunciation by Jean Valentine I saw my soul become flesh Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine Eleventh Brother by Jean Valentine one arm still a swan's wing Father Lynch Returns from the Dead by Jean Valentine There's one day a year Fellini in Purgatory by Jean Valentine He was shoveling sand Friend by Jean Valentine Friend I need your hand every morning Ghost Elephants by Jean Valentine In the elephant field Hospital: strange lights by Jean Valentine I needed a friend but I have lived in your face by Jean Valentine I have lived in your face La Chalupa, the Boat by Jean Valentine I am twenty Red Cloth by Jean Valentine Red cloth Susan's Photograph by Jean Valentine To the Black Madonna of Chartres by Jean Valentine Friend or no friend

Further Reading

Related Poems Red Cloth by Jean Valentine The Moods by W. B. Yeats Poems about Trees A Poison Tree by William Blake Abandonment Under the Walnut Tree by D. A. Powell An Apple Gathering by Christina Rossetti Arbolé, Arbolé . . . by Federico García Lorca Before the Snake by Nathaniel Tarn Birch by Cynthia Zarin Birches by Robert Frost Christmas Trees by Robert Frost Gather by Rose McLarney Get Used To It by Margaret Young Goddess of Maple at Evening by Chard deNiord Hard Night by Christian Wiman How From Politeness to the Trees by Cecily Parks How to Uproot a Tree by Jennifer K. Sweeney If You Go into the Woods You Will Find It Has a Technology by Heather Christle In California During the Gulf War by Denise Levertov Leaves by Lloyd Schwartz Letter from Town: The Almond Tree by D. H. Lawrence Loveliest of Trees by A. E. Housman Man in Stream by Rosanna Warren My Friend Tree by Lorine Niedecker My Lady Is Compared to a Young Tree by Vachel Lindsay Not Dead by Robert Graves Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost Orpheus by William Shakespeare Pear Tree by H. D. Russian Birch by Nathaniel Bellows Solstice by Ellen Dudley Song of the Trees by Mary Colborne-Veel The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass The Heart of the Tree by Henry Cuyler Bunner The Lemon Trees by Eugenio Montale The Life of Trees by Dorianne Laux The Mahogany Tree by William Makepeace Thackeray The Planting of the Apple-Tree by William Cullen Bryant The Poplar by Richard Aldington The Sound of the Trees by Robert Frost The Testing-Tree by Stanley Kunitz The Weight by Linda Gregg The Wishing Tree by Kathleen Jamie This Lime Tree Bower My Prison by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Trees by Joyce Kilmer Trees in the Garden by D. H. Lawrence Trees Need Not Walk the Earth by David Rosenthal Vertical by Linda Pastan What Happened at the Service? by Prageeta Sharma When Autumn Came by Faiz Ahmed Faiz White Trees by Nathalie Handal Willow by Jane Shore Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams