Some Trees by 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.