Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Soto
Gary Soto
Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California, in April, 1952, to working-class...
More >
FURTHER READING
Poems about Gardens
Letter to Brooks [Spring Garden]
by Major Jackson
Angel of Duluth [excerpt]
by Madelon Sprengnether
Bulb Planting Time
by Edgar Guest
Digging Potatoes, Sebago, Maine
by Amy E. King
Done With
by Ann Stanford
Garden Homage
by Medbh McGuckian
Garden of Bees
by Matthew Rohrer
Herb Garden
by Timothy Steele
In the Garden
by Thomas Hardy
Loneliness
by Trumbull Stickney
Lucinda Matlock
by Edgar Lee Masters
October (section I)
by Louise Glück
osculation for easter flower
by Sandra Miller
Telling the Bees
by Deborah Digges
The Garden
by Andrew Marvell
The Garden Year
by Sara Coleridge
The Public Garden
by Robert Lowell
They'll spend the summer
by Joshua Beckman
Trees in the Garden
by D. H. Lawrence
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
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
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
Not Dead
by Robert Graves
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 Branches
by Jean Valentine
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 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
When Autumn Came
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
White Trees
by Nathalie Handal
Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams
Adopt a Poet | Add to Notebook | E-mail to Friend | Print
Looking Around, Believing  
by Gary Soto

How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind —  white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We're keeping busy — 
This way, that way, we're making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.



Share Digg StumbleUpon Facebook E-mail to Friend



"Looking Around, Believing," from New and Selected Poems by Gary Soto. Copyright © 1995 by Gary Soto. Used by permission of Chronicle Books.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2012 by Academy of American Poets.