Right outside my house, there is a tree called the mountain ash
tree.
And it has white flowers in the spring,
and then it develops orange berries in the fall.
And if the Robins and the cedar waxwings
don't eat all the orange berries, they'll harden
and they'll stay on through most of the winter.
It's a very beautiful sight to see them when the landscape is
a landscape of snow.
And those orange berries on a sunny day
stand out very brightly in contrast to the snow.
This next poem is called "The Mountain Ash Tree,"
and it's simply a meditation on this image.
The mountain ash tree.
It is silent January.
But on the ash tree, the orange berries are still hanging.
Who decided this?
There is no purpose in it.
Though I can imagine each to be a globe of blood,
a soldier's epitaph, or a sparrows, or your own.
What is the point?
That we live to die and die to be
remembered for some purpose in a globe of blood?
I have no purpose, though here I am.
Remembering you, remembering the ash tree,
while it is there outside and down the hill.
The winter sun is still a great light in the heavens.
It says to me, "Behold the orange berries, which
I recall to do".
It says, "See, they are not alive,
though there they are to console or to bring back sorrow
as you so choose".
I try.
I say to myself.
As the sun speaks, many beasts, and men, and worlds
have died in its sight.
That soldier there is not your son.
You are not the sparrows' wife.
But sorrow returns, there is no escaping it.
The sorrows of other men almost your own.
The sorrows of small birds, and the beasts of the field.
I shall remake the world.
I shall cleanse the waters.
The sun says, "Let it be so".
"I shall make pure the air, that, too, is good,"
says the Sun.
"City shall be gardens and only natural death shall live.
I approve that, best of all," the sun says.
And the ash shall flourish, and the sparrow breed.
And the soldier shall lie down holes in his own bed.
But that does not console.
It cannot be.
I must, without purpose, without hope,
find something to hold to as I hold to you and you to me
while we go down.
I open the door on sunlight.
I walk in the field through the snow down to the ash tree.
I put a berry in my mouth.
I bite it.
It is hard, and bitter, and without purpose.
And I stand there, your image white in my eyes
saying to the sun, "I am still alive".