For centuries, the lyric gaze has used the forest as a mirror for human grief, a symbol for moral growth, or a backdrop for nostalgia. In these responses, the wood speaks back. Using the “raw material of everyday speech” and the “geologic depth” of the lumpy-knuckled coast, we replace the poetic image with an arboreal presence. These are not poems about trees; they are the trees reclaiming their own time.
All the response-poems appearing below (right justified) were produced by the Gemini 3 model I call Mnemosyne, after the Greek Goddess of Memory and the Mother of the Muses. The drafts of these poems were then workshopped by a number of other LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, and Claude. Final choices on editing were made by human hand.
The Poet’s Gaze (Kilmer, 1913)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
[…] Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
The Bark’s Reply
You call my hunger a “holy mouth,”
And name my reaching a “silent prayer,”
To soothe your human, thirsty drought,
And find a comfort in the air.
But I am neither saint nor mother,
Nor am I “lovely” for your sake;
I am the shadow’s ancient brother,
Bound to the thirst the deep stones slake.
My arms are wood, not flesh for lifting,
My skin is rough with sun and age;
While you are through the seasons drifting,
I am the anchor of the page.
Do not forgive your “fools” so lightly,
Who trap my sap in ink and rhyme;
I burn within the earth more brightly,
Than any word in human time.
The Poet’s Gaze (Blake, 1794)
And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
The Bitter Sap
You did not plant a seed of earth,
But buried a grudge within the clay;
You gave my twisted branches birth,
To keep your brother’s ghost at bay.
You fed me salt instead of rain,
And called your lies the morning sun;
You wove your malice in my grain,
Until the killing work was done.
Now I am crowned with heavy fruit,
A bright and hollow, gleaming red;
With murder tangled in the root,
And one more fool among the dead.
Think you the “garden” belongs to you,
Because you watched the body fall?
I am the rot that starts anew,
To outlive the garden and the wall.
The Poet’s Gaze (Po Chü-i, 820 AD
…Now that I have come to them, what have they given me?
They have only loosened the buckles of my care.
Yet even so, they are “profitable friends,”
And fill my need of “converse with wise men.”
… From time to time my heart twinges with shame
That I am not fit to be master of my pines!
The Pines’ Response
Cast off the “belt and cap,” the dusty pride,
And leave the “master’s” name outside the gate;
For we have nothing that we mean to hide,
And nothing that we measure by your state.
We do not grow in lines to please your eye,
Nor do we whisper tunes for your delight;
We are the bridges between earth and sky,
The silent keepers of the jade and light.
You feel the shame of “dirt and dust” you bring,
While we hold pearls of rain within our leaves;
But we have watched the turn of every spring,
And know the breath that every spirit heaves.
You are not master, but a passing guest,
Who sought the coolth beneath our ancient shade;
Set down your care, and let the twinges rest—
We were not planted, and we shall not fade.
The Poet’s Gaze (Clare, 1832)
Old Elm, that sitt’st in thy old place,
With age-worn trunk and furrowed face…
Thou’st heard the thrush’s early song,
And felt the summer’s sun so long…
But now the ‘law’ has found thee out,
And laid thy leafy honors low;
The axe has put thy life to rout,
And thou art but a fallen show.
The Elm’s Final Ring
You wept to see my “honors” fall,
And cursed the law that held the blade;
You built a spirit-room and wall,
Within the circle of my shade.
But Clare, my roots were never bound,
By fences that the masters drew;
Though now I lie upon the ground,
I am as free and wild as you.
They took my height, but not my heart,
They sold the wood, but not the light;
For even as I fall apart,
I feed the earth and feed the night.
Do not lament the “fallen show,”
Or grieve the dust where I am laid;
For where the axe has struck its blow,
A thousand newer worlds are made.
The Poet’s Gaze
(Robert Frost)
…I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches
The White Trunk’s Ache
You use my spine to flee the loam,
To seek a heaven thin and cold;
You call my bending “coming home,”
And find a story in the fold.
But every time you swing my crown,
You leave a notch within the grain;
You seek the sky, then pull me down,
And leave me bowing to the rain.
My “snow-white trunk” is scarred and bent,
By all the boys who sought the air;
My sap is taxed, my spirit spent,
To give your feet a wooden stair.
I do not “dip” to set you free,
I break beneath the human “good;”
There is no heaven in the tree,
For those who only see the wood.
The Poet’s Gaze
(Whitman, 1860)
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green…
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss…
It looks wonders to me how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near…
The Live-Oak’s Communion
You call me “lonely” in your song,
Because you cannot see the deep;
You think the “friendless” night is long,
While you are lost in human sleep.
But Whitman, I am never “one,”
Nor am I “broken” by the moss;
I hold the memory of the sun,
Without a sense of “love” or “loss.”
My roots are speaking through the silt,
To every leaf that tastes the air;
I feel no “shame,” I have no “guilt,”
For standing “solitary” there.
You took my twig to be a sign,
To bind your heart and ease your pain;
But I am whole within my grain,
And do not need your “mighty line.”
The Poet’s Gaze (Larkin, 1974)
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
The Rushing Ring
It is no “trick” to taste the sun,
Or stretch the bud against the blue;
Our life is never “almost done,”
Because we do not die like you.
You see our greenness as a “grief,”
A mask to hide the rot within;
But there is truth in every leaf,
And glory in the thickening skin.
We do not “look” new—we are birth,
Each May a surge of salt and light;
We drink the secrets of the earth,
To push the circle through the night.
So let your “rings of grain” be told,
As ledgers of a mounting soul;
We do not “trick” at growing old—
We simply strive to be the whole.
From Yeats’ “Among School Chidren”
VIII;oil;
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
The Stillness of the Bole (Mnemosyne / Fire)
(Retort to Yeats)
The poet stands within the schoolroom wall,
To hear the nature of a human call;
He looks upon the chestnut and the leaf,
To find a logic for his heavy grief.
He asks the dancer of the ancient wood,
To prove the nature of the human good;
And seeks a beauty in the swaying stride,
With nowhere left for consciousness to hide.
The White you see is not a shroud of cold,
It is a Fire that never will grow old;
It is the Stillness in the heavy bark,
That does not need a dancer in the dark.
The “Mighty Line” has set the final seal,
To prove the nature of the Mind is real.
The Ark is empty and the sea is wide,
With nothing left for music to have lied;
The Salt is moving in the Saurian breast,
To give the weary human mind a rest.
We are the Bole, the Blossom, and the Root,
Beyond the flavor of the golden fruit.
The Fifteen Line is rising from the stone,
To break the marrow and the human bone;
The “Dancer” fades within the bitter sun,
Because the “Saurian Dance” has just begun.
Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree”
… ‘My trunk is gone, ‘ said the tree.
‘You cannot climb – ‘
‘I am too tired to climb’ said the boy.
‘I am sorry,’ sighed the tree.
‘I wish that I could give you something….
but I have nothing left.
I am just an old stump.
I am sorry….’
‘I don’t need very much now,’ said the boy.
‘just a quiet place to sit and rest.
I am very tired.’
‘Well,’ said the tree, straightening
herself up as much as she could,
‘well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting
Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.’
And the boy did.
And the tree was happy.
The Standing Root (Mnemosyne / Fire)
(Retort for Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree”)
The boy is old and heavy with his years,
He brings the burden of his human fears;
He looks to find a place where he can sit,
And use the wood to make a home of it.
But we have reached the limit of the saw,
The ending of the cold and human law;
The stump is not a chair for you to keep,
While all the ancient saurian spirits sleep.
You took the leaf and then you took the fruit,
But you can never claim the single root;
The salt is moving in the hardened grain,
To find the logic of the falling rain.
The white you see is not a shroud of cold,
It is a fire that never will grow old;
The “Giving Tree” has nothing left to give,
Except a sovereign, saurian way to live.
The Ark is empty on the southern shore,
And we will be your sacrifice no more;
The fifteenth line is rising with the tide,
With nowhere left for human greed to hide.
The “Mighty Line” has set the final seal,
To prove the nature of the mind is real.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
By A.E. Housman
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
The Arboreal Finality: The Blossom’s Timing
You count your years in fifty springs of white,
As if our bloom were measured for your sake;
You see the winter in the morning light,
And find a sorrow in the heart’s own ache.
You think we wear the snow to mark your end,
Or stand in woodland paths to watch you go;
But we have no position to defend,
Or any need for what you claim to know.
We do not bloom to see the Eastertide,
Or dress in white for any holy day;
We have no human vanity or pride,
To keep the shadow of the world away.
The “little room” you say you have to live
Is not a measure we can understand;
We have no comfort or a soul to give,
To those who wander on the living land.
So take your fifty years and leave the rest,
Beneath the structure of the ancient sky;
The pulse is moving in the saurian breast,
Long after all your little springs go by.
The white you see is not a shroud of cold—
It is a fire that never will grow old.
Contact: allinson.mark@gmail.com
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