What the Trees Sing in Springtime

A poem about new songs that aren't new. (And a word about this Substack turning one year old.)

Photo by Juairia Islam Shefa on Unsplash

Even a winter-rooted soul like myself succumbs to the enchantment of new leaves in springtime.

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SPRING CANTICLE


No more new words
for sticky curls of early leaves
thrust out of twig-tips flushed with sap
from the heart of ancient living wood;

no more new words
for the mercy of God that endures forever,
unfolded tender, green again,
in any momentary season of compassion.          

See how the trees stand like monks
rooted in their choirs, voicelessly chanting
the same cycle of psalms as the years turn round:

old glorias for new green, familiar daily hymns
to praise again the silent stir at creation’s heart,
the moist, frail amazement of grace everlasting. 

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poem using the little widget above the photograph.]

Do you need to know that I wrote this poem in 2014? Do you need me to bore you with musings about the ways that human experience and perception are shaped by the cyclic, go-away-come-back rhythm of all life on this planet? Nah. Let the poem sing its own song.

Here’s what I’ll sing about instead, just this once: It was on the second Wednesday of April 2023 that I hit Publish on my very first Substack post — published it to a list of one (me!), then instantly sent a separate email to a bunch of my friends and relations to tell them what I’d done and how they could go and look. Within 48 hours I had my first 40 or so subscribers (four times as many as I’d dared to hope for), and I knew them all by name. Then, pretty soon — what, seriously? — people whose names I didn’t know started reading and commenting and subscribing as well. I was amazed, bemused, and grateful to the old reader-friends and to the new ones, and I showed my gratitude in the only way I knew how: by coming around every Wednesday with more poems for you all to read. That you’ve continued to read them, and that so many of you have found ways to tell me what you feel and think about them, has been … life-changing. I don’t have the best skills or the best temperament to engage with the gatekeepers of traditional publishing; being able to ignore those gatekeepers and find readers anyway is giving me a life that teaches me more every day about what a poet is for, and why I always wanted to be one.

Amazed. Bemused. Grateful. More poems next Wednesday, I promise, and the Wednesday after that. Watch this space. Thank you, thank you, thank you for watching this space.

🌿The 26th Avenue Poet