For the Love of Trees- Poems

The time feels right to honor trees. Our last great and unprotected forests on public lands are more threatened than ever by logging and roads. The future of forests, biodiversity, and natural carbon capture and storage is on the line. How do we gain strength to defend all we hold dear? I hope one or more of my poems may resonate and inspire.

The Art of Tree Hugging

To know the shape of Tree
I climbed a hill. Gazed down upon
a round crown fluttering lobed leaves.

To shape my knowing of Tree, I lay
on my back in grass below whorling branches
as a black ant hauled a bug like an unwieldy mattress .

To Tree my knowing shape, I spread my arms wide
encircling a circular trunk. Pressed my cheek on sandpaper bark,
Listening for a pulse, I heard my heart beating slow as amber sap.

Last Stand

The breath of cedar is my breath
My dreams wander lost in deep time
when a million great trees chorused
bird song from root to branching crown
*
My dreams wander lost in deep time
gliding on fringed velvet owl feathers
Bird song from root to branching crown
Mist a veil for the sleeping sun

Gliding on fringed velvet owl feathers
silent as roosting swifts in a hollow tree
Mist a veil for the sleeping sun
emerging soon to cast shafts of light

Silent as roosting swifts in a hollow tree
Before the axe, chainsaw, and amputations
Emerging soon to cast shafts of light
the breath of cedar is my breath

Vaux’s Swifts Rewinding Time in Bend, Oregon
With words from W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

As day slips toward night
thousands of tiny twittering birds
like gathered ashes of wildfires
burning in the Cascade Mountains
whorl counterclockwise
around a high brick chimney

I feel the torrential pull of Vaux’s Swifts
lifting me off my feet where I watch
three stories below, gazing upwards
mesmerized by the center that cannot hold.
Swifts whirling whirling scatter scatter
to fling themselves into the wide yawn
of blue-black clouds.

Time folds upon herself
bending waves of last light
into wings creasing contours
of the impossible return

Return to a time before chimneys
when great hollow trees rose high
among the verdure of evergreen forests
inviting the swifts to roost within
cavernous havens of wood not brick.

The pattern breaks. Time snaps back
to present only for an instant
until the gyre of birds rings rings again
around the jutting rectangular chimney
rising from a historic downtown building
where once the groans of sick patients
wafted upward, old and young quarantined,
felled by the 1918 influenza
their center falling apart.

How long have the migrating swifts
known this chimney as haven
on their autumnal journey south?
How do they decide en masse to circle
clockwise or counterclockwise?

What is it to pour yourself feet-first
into a chimney among your fluttering kin,
to hook your little feet to the inner wall,
fold your sharp wings closed and rest til dawn?

Do you dream of your ancestors whos
hearts beat within trees, filling the
empty space that was once heartwood
with whispered stories of migration?

Or are you too dizzy to do anything
but find your center in the whorl of time

Your Last Forest
For Douglas

Before you tumbled
down a rocky ravine
when the forest shattered
into a kaleidoscope
of ferns, lichen and pain,

you inhaled incense
of cedar, fir, and maple
as chickadees bantered,
while plucking caterpillars
from limbs to feed
their chicks.

Walking the trail
with gentle footfall,
senses attuned
to beauty coursing
through your veins
like a waterfall
you knew only… joy.

Bonus–A love poem that has nothing to do with trees, except love has everything to do with trees.

Asleep on the Brink — Poem for Wes

I love your moonlit dreaming
in this stone cottage, your breathing
steady as rollers breaking easy
on my shore.

always fair-weather breath
never wind-whipped waves
flaying cliffs, spraying anger
a hundred feet into the air.

I love nestling close as harbor seals
napping on a sandbar, noses
touching, flippers tapping
upon sleek rotund bodies.

I promise my strong arms
will enfold and keep you safe
Our tidal breathing in synchrony
with the waxing moon.

All poems by Marina Richie. I have a few more recent poems on Substack .

Thank you to the Ekphrastic Poetry Group and especially Laurel Benjamin who runs the group and chooses the paintings and photographs.