Advice to a Forest by Maxwell Bodenheim — Read

/ O trees, to whom the darkness is a child / Scampering in and out of your long, green beards; / O trees, to whom sunlight is a tattered pilgrim / Counting his dreams within your hermitage / And slipping down the road, in twilight robes; / O trees, whose leaves make an incense of sound / Reeling with the beat of your caught feet, / Do not mingle your tips in startled hatred, / When little men come to fell you. / These men will saw you into strips / Of pointed brooding, blind with paint, / But underneath you men will chase / The grey staccato of their lives / Down a glaring maze of walls / Much harder than your own. / And when, at last, the deep brown gaze / Of stolidly amorous time steals over you, / The little men who bit into your hearts / Will stray off in a patter of rabbits' feet. / Look down upon these children then / With the aloof and weary tolerance / That all still things possess, / O trees, to whom the darkness was a child / Scampering in and out of your long, green beards.