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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jean Valentine

The author of many collections of poetry, Jean Valentine has received such honors as the National Book Award, being selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Wallace Stevens Award...
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	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

		Elders by Louise Bogan

		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

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The Branches
by Jean Valentine

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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